I went out to The Big City With The Bright Lights today, and while out I picked up 100 peat pots for seed starting, and some sunflower seeds and some rosemary seeds. The sunflower seeds are because, since i failed to acquire the right sort of corn seed for this year, I thought I might experiment with crops from the earlier Indian Eastern Agricultural Complex ("EAC" - sunflower, goosefoot, sumpweed, little barley, maygrass and erect knotweed) instead of the Three Sisters planting.
The rosemary seed is because every year, I pick up a couple of rosemary plants, and every winter they fail to survive the winter. Starting them from seed is cheaper than laying out cash for already growing plants that are just gonna die anyhow.
I MAY have some goosefoot seed from a couple years ago, but I'm gonna have to shake down some dried flowers to find out if they've set seed or not. Goosefoot is the North American answer to South American Quinoa. Same genus (chenopodium), but different varieties.
Goosefoot (also called "pitseed goosefoot" to distinguish it from European goosefoot, because the seed coat has bunches of tiny pits in it) was raised because it provided greens in the spring and grain in the fall. There are also reports from the earliest explorers and colonists of the Indians using it for seasoning. Apparently they'd burn it to ash, and then use the ash as salt. That works because it's a sort of weed that pulls up whatever is in the soil, including salts. There have been experiments regarding using it for soil reclamation of contaminated soils because it is so efficient at removing impurities from soils.
A few decades ago, there was an archaeological dig at a cave about 3 miles from where I was raised called Daugherty's Cave. Occupation layers going back 11,000 years were present in it, and among those occupation layers was found goosefoot seeds. The seeds found there are generally reported as chenopodium jonesianum, a now extinct domesticated variety, but in reality they were chenopodium berlanderi, plain old wild North American goosefoot. The only real difference between the two were the thickness of the testa, or seed coat.. Over generations of selective breeding by Indians, the jonesianum variety had a reduced seed coat thickness, less than 30 micrometers, whereas the wild variety has a thicker seed coat of over 30 micrometers.
So, I know that it was used by Indians going back 11,000 years or more right here in this area. The seed I collected - if there is any seed there, that is - was collected from my old homestead about 3 miles from that archeological dig, and so is likely to be direct descendants of the plants whose seeds were found in Daugherty's Cave.
The quinoa I've tried to grow (from grocery store seed) has all failed to even sprout, but I know for certain that the North American variety will grow here, because it grows wild.
Just one more tenuous link to a past that is no more, but may someday have to be again.
Squash were also developed by the Indians, from cucurbita pepo. However, the wild variety is bitter, nasty, and slightly poisonous. The Indians bred those qualities out of it over generations to give us the squashes we have today.
.
The rosemary seed is because every year, I pick up a couple of rosemary plants, and every winter they fail to survive the winter. Starting them from seed is cheaper than laying out cash for already growing plants that are just gonna die anyhow.
I MAY have some goosefoot seed from a couple years ago, but I'm gonna have to shake down some dried flowers to find out if they've set seed or not. Goosefoot is the North American answer to South American Quinoa. Same genus (chenopodium), but different varieties.
Goosefoot (also called "pitseed goosefoot" to distinguish it from European goosefoot, because the seed coat has bunches of tiny pits in it) was raised because it provided greens in the spring and grain in the fall. There are also reports from the earliest explorers and colonists of the Indians using it for seasoning. Apparently they'd burn it to ash, and then use the ash as salt. That works because it's a sort of weed that pulls up whatever is in the soil, including salts. There have been experiments regarding using it for soil reclamation of contaminated soils because it is so efficient at removing impurities from soils.
A few decades ago, there was an archaeological dig at a cave about 3 miles from where I was raised called Daugherty's Cave. Occupation layers going back 11,000 years were present in it, and among those occupation layers was found goosefoot seeds. The seeds found there are generally reported as chenopodium jonesianum, a now extinct domesticated variety, but in reality they were chenopodium berlanderi, plain old wild North American goosefoot. The only real difference between the two were the thickness of the testa, or seed coat.. Over generations of selective breeding by Indians, the jonesianum variety had a reduced seed coat thickness, less than 30 micrometers, whereas the wild variety has a thicker seed coat of over 30 micrometers.
So, I know that it was used by Indians going back 11,000 years or more right here in this area. The seed I collected - if there is any seed there, that is - was collected from my old homestead about 3 miles from that archeological dig, and so is likely to be direct descendants of the plants whose seeds were found in Daugherty's Cave.
The quinoa I've tried to grow (from grocery store seed) has all failed to even sprout, but I know for certain that the North American variety will grow here, because it grows wild.
Just one more tenuous link to a past that is no more, but may someday have to be again.
Squash were also developed by the Indians, from cucurbita pepo. However, the wild variety is bitter, nasty, and slightly poisonous. The Indians bred those qualities out of it over generations to give us the squashes we have today.
.