Friday, April 6, 2012

The line up...for now at least.

Click the image to enlarge.

This is the tentative placement for the plants. As stated all of the seeds are in the pots and I'm awaiting germination, but this could change the more I read up. As of now though, this is where these guys are going. Notice how I have each row labeled either Hohokam or Urban. The top half of each vegetable row will be receiving the identified Urban farming method and the bottom half will get the Hohokam methods. I thought about separating them further, but with the respective vegetables right next to one another, they will receive the same amount of sunlight exposure, so I thought it best to have the vegetables in side by side rows so that the sunlight control is kept as constant as possible. Water might get a little tricky, but can be better managed with how the individual vegetable rows are separated.

Not quite in the ground...

It was a lot of cottage cheese and yogurt.
Alrighty, well I am about 2 weeks behind the planting schedule but so is about everything else in my life at the moment, so I think we're doing okay for consistency. Over the past week, I have collected all of the pots that I could from home and the neglected ones on my bottom shelf back in my classroom. When I realized I was going to be woefully short of my projected 64 plants, I found one of my "reduce, reuse, recycle" items. I have been amassing yogurt, cottage cheese and humus containers for almost two years now, thinking "you don't know when you are going to need a good container!" Evidence in photography.

Prematurely devouring the last of the yogurt in the fridge to acquire the last needed container, I got to my goal of 64. 64 was chosen because it was the number that came out to allow enough spacing between plants along the rows while still allowing for enough test subjects to produce reliable results ( I have at least 12 plants of each type planted in the pots). I placed them where I envisioned them going when formally planted. Once the spacing was done, I placed a bit of the compost in the bottom of each planter from my compost bins. I realized maybe the Hohokam didn't have compost, so I went inside to scope it out. What I found was...nothing. I found a bunch on modern services with the word "Hohokam" in it, but nothing to do with any composting methods. The urban farming sites were all gung-ho about it, and I already knew that, hence the compost bins, but as I was standing in front of these bins with bugs flying about, I thought that it is likely that the tribe had recycled older plant material and pieces of the squash, beans, corn, tobacco and cotton plants that they did not use. Even though my compost is made of a lot more than that (even with my roommates used coffee grounds) it has turned into some nutrient rich compost. I decided to apply the compost to all pots because the idea of composting didn't start with urban farming; it has been around as long as farming itself, and I want these plants to live and produce much longer than what the semester calls for.

Some conventional and non conventional planters
Compost in, soil in, some water in... and now some seeds in. As I referred to in the upper paragraph, the Hohokam focused on squash, cotton, corn, tobacco and beans (Sharp, 2012). In the April Edition of Phoenix Home and Garden, they suggested that for this planting time in the low desert you plant beans, cantaloupe, corn, cucumbers, green onions, okra, peanuts, pumpkin and summer squash (Cromell 2012.) As I noticed beans, squash and corn overlapping, I decided to go with those as my two overlaps of urban and Hohokam vegetables of choice. I would have loved to gotten the other plants mentioned in the magazine, but figured I would focus on consistency for research sake. Though I did buy some pumpkin seeds for fun, but don't know where yet to plant them.

Cromell, Cathy. April Checklist: For the Low Desert (2012) Phoenix Home and Garden. Scottsdale, AZ.

Sharp, Jay W. The Hohokam: Farmers of the Desert (2012) DesertUSA.com. San Deigo, CA. http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind8.html

Monday, April 2, 2012

My Hypothesis...

When I was turning up the soil the other day with the mighty pick-ax, I found a couple pieces of glass, discarded trip irrigation tubes, some screws and nails along with some pieces of asphalt shingling. I thought to myself "I bet the Hohokam didn't accidentally dig up pieces of asphalt shingling." I also then thought to myself "I bet the Hohokam didn't have full time jobs and were full time students while they were farming too." Well, I shouldn't say that they didn't have anything else to do besides farm, I am sure the tribes people carried multiple roles, such as farmers, teachers, defenders, parents and all the vital roles that can be found in any society over time. But I can't help but think that they were able to a lot more time and focus to cultivating the land, whereas most people now roll up to the grocery store, plunk down some cash for groceries for the week (be it themselves and/or their families), and stick it in the fridge when they get home....I bet the Hohokam didn't have a fridge when they got home.

 I went to the Phoenix public library to check up on some Hohokam history.They had a special room called "The Arizona Room" which housed a treasure trove of original AZ artifacts. There were a few restrictions though. I was condensed to about 45 minutes worth of research (by my own schedule) and I was not allowed to take anything out nor write anything down (all AZ archives had to stay in that room and no pens were allowed...I didn't have a pencil). I pulled a few pieces off the shelves and kept getting more and more information about the canal system that was unearthed around Sky Harbor International Airport, which is all of a 8 minute drive from my house. What I wanted to find was specific plants and planting methods that the tribe used for the spring, which is when I intend to plant. I didn't find anything. I left the library a little dejected, thinking what the heck did they do, and when the heck am I going to be able to get back to the library to research this stuff with still not having found the time to plant.

 So for my hypothesis. Thinking about those asphalt pieces I am thinking that the urban planting methods will be better. I've come to this immediate expectation because this soil has been subject to well over a century of urban development, has had a variety of things done to it, and is going to be affected by the inability of a busy dude to tend to the plants every need at any given day...I've got four wedding weekends coming up out of town, which is when I get to actually play in the garden. I've got the plant species picked out (corn, summer squash, garden beans and Tepary Beans) which were mentioned on a variety of websites and the PHX garden magazine for both native and modern planting. I believe that trying to incorporate more native methods (if I ever find them) of how to plant won't do well in modern urban farming. The surrounding vegetation is different, the soil is different, the inputs will inevitable be different. And to remind the reader, the purpose isn't to recreate the environment of the Hohokam tribe at the time, it is just to see if there methods would work in an urban setting with an urban farmer with an urban lifestyle. With the very wide, wide, wide range of variables and ill-kept controls... I simply don't see how traditional ecological knowledge will prevail here in comparison to urban methods. I am not discounting that the crops won't grow at all, but I think that the land has been changed so much and my deficiencies as a farmer won't be able to support what successful TEK implementation demands.