Raised Bed Gardening Blog

Ancestral Gardening in the Galisteo Basin

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Created on Wednesday, 05 February 2014 07:37

The Native Americans inhabited the Galisteo Basin for over 10,000 years. You find their signs everywhere- on basalt rocks as petroglyphs, on the ground in the forms of pottery chards, flints, and arrowheads, on Pueblo sites where they farmed, captured water, and dug out pits for their houses. Corn, beans, and squash were their staple foods- known as The Three Sisters. In an attempt to emulate their growing methods, I was involved in a building and conservation project in the early '90's in the basin, to bring back the native grasses, and to grow The Three Sisters in dug-out barrow trenches at the base of hills on the property. Without any supplemental water, we grew corn, beans, and squash. Its not rocket science to grow food. It simply requires some ingenuity, and the desire and necessity to sustain oneself with plants for our pleasure, and our survival- just like the ancients.

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