There are many things I want to write about. I was offered the chance to do a presentation on Historical Native American Gardening Techniques. We all know a future book is using that info. I will talk about it in far more depth at a later point, but there were a few key points I wanted to share.
- The gardening techniques that worked were not based on mechanization, but biological innovation. Mastering the soil, knowing the weather, composting, and knowing what your pests matter.
- While my presentation focused on Sioux and other Great Plains farmers, virtually all native tribes relied on crops for calories, nutrients, and pollinators. For example, corn for calories, squash and beans for nutrients, and sunflowers for food and drawing in pollinators.
- In places with heavy rainfall, use mounds, like mounding up the dirt in a hill and planting the seeds on the side, so that when the rains come, it doesn’t wash the seed away, and gives the germinated seeds more room to grow well.
- Inversely, in desert regions, seed in the lowest elevation regions, or make them so that what little rain you get pools by the awaiting seeds.
- Farming was a lifestyle, so the religion, family gatherings, even dating revolved around farming seeding, weeding, harvesting, smoking and the like.
More in the future.