Tending Traditions

Squash Vine Borer Averted! With the awful luck we’ve had...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:59:00 -0500

Squash Vine Borer Averted!

With the awful luck we’ve had in the past few years of Squash Vine Borer infestation we decided to wait until later in the season to plant our squash. The borers emerge in late June to early July and quickly lay their eggs on the squash. We didn’t plant our squash until late June, so the plants had just germinated by the time the borers were ready. That may seem really late to plant squash, but as you can see we already have one fully grown Lakota squash which has begun to ripen and many, many more in development. We probably have another month or more before the first frost, so we should be able to harvest quite a few squash this season!

Tassel ear?! Have you ever heard of a tassel ear? Neither had...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:47:27 -0500

Tassel ear?!

Have you ever heard of a tassel ear? Neither had we, but it looks like we have one growing on the Oto corn we planted this season. There’s always something new to learn in gardening and apparently this does happen to corn occasionally. Corn flowers are both male and female when they first appear, but as they develop, the female flowers abort on one and the male flowers abort on another leaving the male tassel and female ear, but sometimes that doesn’t always happen and so in this case the female flower did not abort on what became the tassel which was then fertilized by the male flower and formed this ear. They also tend to develop on the sucker stems; those stems that are offshoots of the main stems. It seems that usually these aren’t very useful since they tend not develop fully due to not having the protective covering of the ear, but it looks like the one on our corn has produced some nice big kernels!

ningiimakakokemin! We made birch bark boxes! This summer we made...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:33:00 -0500

The basic size we will need for our makak

Ironing the wiigwaas makes the hardened older bark pliable once more

Chaz and Raine excited about finishing their makaks

The sides sewn with wiigob and dogwood branches to make the rims. Here the dogwood is held onto the rough basket with clothes pins. The excess bark is cut off and wiigob is used to attach the rim

The finished makaks!

ningiimakakokemin! We made birch bark boxes!

This summer we made wiigwaas (birch bark) makaks for our summer project to learn more about the proccess and materials involved. We use some old birch bark for this project and so had to use the iron to heat the bark to make it pliable again. The whole process took a series of afternoons usually working inside because of the 100+ degree weather! In the end our makaks turned out rather nice, with Chaz, one of our interns this summer from the American Indian O.I.C., adding his initials with wiigob (the inner bark of the basswood tree).

With the bee balm in bloom, we picked some of it to dry on the...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:15:00 -0500

Raine (one of our interns this year from American Indian O.I.C.) picking bee balm

Bee balm, sage, and tobacco drying on the drying rack

With the bee balm in bloom, we picked some of it to dry on the drying stage. This plant has many names in many languages. It’s common name in English is Bee Balm or Bergamot. It’s Dakota/Lakota names are hehaka tapejuta or wahkpe wastemma. It’s Ojibwe names are bibigwanakak or wabinowak and its Latin name is Monarda fistulosa.

The leaves and flowers are dried to use to treat headaches, colds, fever reducer among many other things. We will be drying this for use as a tea.

Corn! Here are some of the first cobs from this year’s...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:30:00 -0500

Corn!

Tobacco!

Squash!

Corn! Here are some of the first cobs from this year’s corn harvest in the Big Back Yard. On the top left is Delware Blue Corn, top right is Seneca Round Nose Corn, bottom left is 1,000 year old corn, and bottom right is Iroquois Hominy Corn. No matter how hard we try, there is always some cross pollination with the corn, so one of the Delaware Blue Corn cobs cross pollinated with appears to have been the Seneca Round Nose Corn. We just won’t save these individual kernels for the collections.

Tobacco! The tobacco have returned from their space journey and are settling into their home on earth. Come to the Big Back Yard over the weekend to see them. They’re under a sign labeled “tobacco” near the Hopi Red Dye Amaranth patch.

Squash! The squash has bounced back after its nearly devastating infestation by the squash vine borer. Even though we trapped well over 100 adult vine borer moths in our trap this summer, some seem to have managed to escape its captivating pheromones and laid their eggs on our squash. We managed to save parts of the plants by mounding dirt over the vine in several places, which then caused it to sprout roots. We then cut off the infected area, leaving the unaffected vine portions to grow. Hopefully we will be able to have a few more squash develop before the first frost in five weeks or so.

Study finds sunflowers were domesticated in eastern North America

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:04:49 -0500

Here’s a link to a recent study that found sunflowers to have been domesticated in the southern Mississipi River basin:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-sunflower-domesticated-mexico.html

Trip to Tsyunhehkw^ at the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin We were...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:25:00 -0500

Main office

The farm

The canning gardens

Braided & dried corn

Corn in the field

Beautiful vista of corn fields

Cannery products

Corn products

The Oneida Nation Museum

Mariah and Dahjiae enjoying the museum

Trip to Tsyunhehkw^ at the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin

We were fortunate this summer to schedule a tour of the Tsyunhehkwa program run by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin near Green Bay. Ted Skenadore gave us a warm welcome and tour of the amazing 83 acre organic and sustainable farm that the Nation began about 15 years ago. We learned about the entire process of planting their traditional white corn, harvesting, and finally processing. They also raise organic, free-range chickens and turkeys as well as cattle. This is a wonderful program for not only the Oneida Nation community, but the surrounding community as well and is a great example of the concept of Indigenous food sovereignty in action. We all highly recommend the tour. Thanks Ted!

We ended our trip with a visit to the very nice and educational Oneida Nation Museum.

Ethnobotany: It’s not just about the plants we...

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:04:00 -0500

Sweetgrass baskets from the collections

Birchbark for our tops

Dahjiae making a turtle with quills

Adding the sweetgrass

Mariah adding sweetgrass to her top

Ethnobotany: It’s not just about the plants we eat

Ethnobotany is about how people use and interact with plants. Looking through the collections of the Science Museum we found inspiration in these Ojibwe sweet grass baskets. Having some birchbark and porcupine quills on hand and using the sweetgrass we grow in the Turtle Medicine Garden, we decided to try our own renditions of a sweetgrass basket top. We harvested and dried the sweetgrass which then had to be soaked in water to make it pliable again. As you can see in the pictures, Dahjiae’s and Mariah’s basket tops turned out beautifully!

Photo

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:56:00 -0500

Certificates of flight authentification

Cell chamber with tiny tobacco seeds

Jim sees which seeds have germinated

Mariah confirms Jim's observation

Scott and Mariah exhausted from counting

Planting seeds to grow on earth

Seeds in Space!

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:50:39 -0500

This summer, we enjoyed a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in NASA’s last space shuttle Flight STS-135. Tobacco seeds from our collection traveled 5,284,662 miles in 200 earth orbits aboard shuttle Atlantis. Jim Rock, Dakota educator and a member of the Science Museum’s American Indian Advisory Board secured us some space to test the extent to which their germination would occur in a microgravity and soilless environment in some very sophisticated test tubes (cell chambers seen above). Rock worked with John M. Cassanto, President Instrumentation Technology Associates Inc.who designed the cell chambers and was very generous to donate enough space for six of these cell chambers to house our seeds.

The seeds for the STS-135 mission were carefully chosen to meet NASA’s strict space requirements and hand-delivered by Rock to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. They were then transferred to Cape Canaveral for the shuttle mission.

Covering the Corn! To prevent cross pollination of our corn,...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:37:44 -0500

Covering the Corn!

To prevent cross pollination of our corn, American Indian O.I.C. interns Dahjiae and Mariah are making sure the fabric is secured to its frame.

Why is The Squash Foggy ? Today we went to take some...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:46:34 -0500

Why is The Squash Foggy ?

Today we went to take some pictures of the garden, and the humidity was so high it fogged the camera up. As you can see that the squash is growing very well.

Be Gone Squash Vine Borer! If you remember from last year, the...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:09:00 -0500

Be Gone Squash Vine Borer!

If you remember from last year, the squash vine borer, seen here in adult form, lays their eggs at the base of the squash vine. After they hatch, they bore into the vine and eat the entire insides of the vine, slowly killing the plant and stopping all nourishment to developing squash and pumpkins.

We just put up our squash vine borer trap two weeks ago and already we’ve trapped and killed nearly 40 of the marauders. The trap uses a pheremone (located just under the green top) to draw the adult moths who then fall into a funnel (the yellow part of the trap) and are asphyxiated by a chemical tape (in the bottom white part). We hope this will ensure a borer free growing season!

Check out this great article on Indigenous food sovereignty!

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:56:00 -0500

Check out this great article on Indigenous food sovereignty!

A new addition to the Changing Gardens Through Time We have a...

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:58:00 -0500

A new addition to the Changing Gardens Through Time

We have a new self-propagated addition to the Changing Gardens: Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). A lot of people might think that it’s a weed since they often see it growing in ditches and other disturbed environments, but we’re glad it decided to move in since it is a plant that continues to be important to Native communities for all sorts of uses.

I picked these tender young leaves this morning and will have them for dinner tonight! I grew up eating these in my community and we call this plant leninci in the Miami language. A lot of the older Miami people I knew growing up really loved to eat not only the tender shoots, but also the early flower pods. You must prepare these carefully, since they contain poisons known as cardiac glycosides. Please do not eat these without the proper knowledge of preparation. You can use other parts of the plant too for making cordage.

Humans aren’t the only ones who like its leaves, Monarch Butterflies do too. Milkweeds are the only plants that Monarch Butterflies will lay their eggs on and the poisonous chemicals in the plant help the Monarchs to avoid predators. So Milkweed is not really a weed, but an important food and material source for humans and critically important habitat for the Monarch Butterfly.

We have squash! The squash that survived the initial squash vine...

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:49:19 -0500

We have squash!

The squash that survived the initial squash vine borer infestation are ready for processing. In the first photo is the Arikara squash itself, about 12 inches long and 4 inches in diameter. In the second photo you can see how the seeds are arranged inside. We were able to harvest about 100 seeds from this squash alone. There were a few other vines that survived the squash borer too and they have some small squash starting on them, hopefully they will grow a lot in the next month before the first frost in mid-October.

Bad news and good news! We’ll give you the bad news first:...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:02:00 -0500

Bad news and good news! We’ll give you the bad news first: We have a Squash Borer infestation! The Squash Vine Borer (Melittia cucurbitae) is the larvae of a moth-like creature who lays her eggs at the base of the squash plant, the larvae then hatch and instantly bore into the stems of the squash plant, eating the entire interior of the stem. Its really difficult to control these without the use of chemicals, which we DO NOT use in the Ethnobotany gardens. The borers may eventually kill the squash plant. The good news is that we have a fully grown squash that we can save and will provide hundreds of seeds (not bad for just one plant from one original seed). Our corn (Mandan Striped Corn) is also tasseling and we are going to have a bumper crop of beans, seen here is the Mandan Shield Bean. The beans are growing so well, they’ve nearly taken over the gardens!

Dakota Drying Stage Event We hosted an event for children to...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:51:00 -0500

The gardens before...

The gardens before...

Ashleigh teaching about corn husks

Jennifer teaching about the drying stage

Plant identification scavenger hunt

Braiding corn

Games and prizes!

Dakota Drying Stage Event

We hosted an event for children to learn about the Dakota drying stage, Native gardening and the many ways we can use plants. We wish to thank Francis Bettelyoun, Barbara Graham Bettelyoun, the Little Earth Women’s Group, and St. Francis Indian Education for coming to our event and having so much fun.

Giving back to the American Indian OIC Ashleigh and Marcus came...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:43:00 -0500

Giving back to the American Indian OIC

Ashleigh and Marcus came back to the American Indian OIC (AIOIC) high school to share some of their new found knowledge with students enrolled in summer school. The AIOIC has a native plants area that needed a little tlc, so we helped in identifying which were native plants and which were invasive non-native plants (a.k.a. weeds), helped remove the invasive plants and thinned out some of the native plants. One of the plants that needed thinning was Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), this is not only a medicinal plant, but also a plant that is excellent to make cordage. In the picture are Ashleigh, Marcus and other OIC students harvesting and processing the dogbane so that we can dry it to make cordage. Notice that they are all wearing gloves. The milky sap from Dogbane can cause major skin irritation for some people, so you should be careful when handling while it is still green.

Piidamiya to Jim Rock for another wonderful tour of significant...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:34:38 -0500

Piidamiya to Jim Rock for another wonderful tour of significant Dakota places around the Twin Cities. Jim was very gracious in sharing his knowledge of these places. It really helped us to think about how our gardening is related to the Dakota place in which we are gardening. We feel very honored to be growing Native heirloom seeds and native plants in the Dakota homeland.