Collaborative Community Garden
“What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.”
Samuel Beckett
Photography by Sarah Dyer
After checking in, we spent the fist small portion of our morning harvesting radishes. Several had split or were badly damaged by pests. We picked all the largest roots, leaving the rest to mature. Caleb explained that the radishes had split because they had been exposed to substantial rain. We tossed several, but each of us left the garden with a large bundle.
We spent about an hour weeding the whole plot as a group. The weed pressure is pretty intense, so we spent the extra time to beat them out of the beds entirely.
We filled our last two beds with red (3 rows) and golden (1 row) beets, as well as more lettuce. I’m so proud of the work we’ve done in this plot; when I walk through our garden gate and see the flags on our pea trellises waving in the sun, I am filled with so much joy! An even greater joy is the realization that this food is for feeding people. I entered into this project with the goal of both reclaiming community space and supplying people with nutritious and delicious vegetables. With the completion of this plot, I feel that we’ve reached a milestone.
Ali Bailey, Caleb Poppe, Ashley Lewis, and Dr. Sarah Williams prepare to attack the weeds. 
Ashley Lewis and Caleb Poppe weeding through our bean bed. The clover cover crop makes it challenging to find the interlopers.
Photography by Sarah Dyer
Do’patsa Makihi’kě: Four-Vegetables-Mixed
After applying compost, Ashley and I prepared our mounds. 
We planted 7 corn seeds per hill. 
We used the same simple technique (read bamboo stick) to mark our holes on the west side of the bed. 
After planting, we watered in our 203 new corn seeds. I am so excited that we are finally getting seeds in ground! In a couple of weeks, after the corn sprouts, we will put in our beans and squash.
Photography by Sarah Dyer
Ashley and I have been watching the weather and waiting for our soil to warm. We chose today to begin seeding our plot because it will probably rain the next 2 days, followed by a warm sunny weekend; the Three Sisters method is almost always seeded in stages, with corn going in first. When the corn is between 3″-4″ tall, we’ll come back through and plant our beans and squash.
We chose Hooker’s Blue Sweet corn for our plot for several reasons. Hooker’s Blue Sweet corn is an heirloom variety from our local area. It mature extremely fast, only 75-80 days. The 4′-4.5′ stalks produce 5-7 inch ears of corn, which are fine eaten fresh and can be ground into a delicious sweet cornmeal.
In the Wampanoag/Zuni mounds, we planted 56 seeds, on the south side of the Hidatsa plot we planted 92 seeds, and on the North side of the same area we planted another 63 seeds, for a total of 203 possible stalks. Ashley soaked the dry kernels briefly in lukewarm water before we planted to give them a head start, and she took our remaining seeds home to plant in a tray, in case we need to replace seeds that don’t germinate.
“In the garden vegetable family are five; corn, beans, squashes, sunflowers, and tobacco. The seeds of all these plants were brought up from beneath the ground by the Mandan people.
Now the corn, as we believe, has an enemy–the sun who tries to burn the corn. But at night, when the sun has gone down, the corn has magic power. It is the corn that brings the night moistures–the early morning mist and fog, and the dew–as you can see yourself in the morning from the water dripping from the corn leaves. Thus the corn grows and keeps on until it is ripe.
The sun may scorch the corn and try hard to dry it up, but the corn takes care of itself, bringing the moistures that make the corn, and also the beans, sunflowers, squashes, and tobacco grow. The corn possesses all this magic power.
When you white people met our Mandan people we gave to the whites the name Maci’, or Waci’, meaning nice people, or pretty people. We called them by this name because they had white faces and wore fine clothes. We said also ‘We will call these people our friends!’ And from that time to this we have never made war on white men.
Our Mandan corn must now be all over the world, for we gave the white men our seeds. And so it seems we Mandans have helped every people. But the seed of our varieties of corn were originally ours. We know that white men must also have had corn seed, for their corn is different from ours. But all we older folk can tell our native corn from that of white men.”
–WOUNDED FACE (Mandan)
Gilbert L. Wilson: Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, Page 7