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