7.2 Farming Through Drought
Drought is a part of life in the southwestern United States. This lesson teaches students how drought can disrupt the lifecycle of a plant and diminish yields, and how Pueblo people and their ancestors mitigate the effect of drought on their crops. Download the PDF versions of the long or short sessions.
Preparation
Grades: 6, 7, 8
This lesson can be taught to each middle school grade with increasing complexity and detail.
Season: Spring/early Summer, Fall
Objectives
- Understand how drought can disrupt the lifecycle of a plant and diminish yields.
- Understand the relationship between corn, the environment and Pueblo culture and diet.
- Learn how past Pueblo farmers might have mitigated the effect of drought on their crops.
- Create an experimental dryland garden.
- Explore the mathematics of agricultural labor: time needed for planting annual corn crops using the Hopi’s so’ya (digging stick) method
Key Terms
- Annual plant
- Perennial plant
- Domesticated plant
- Wild edible plant
- Digging stick/so’ya
- Plant spacing and depth
- Hectare
- Check dams
Materials and Tools
- Jars of seeds to be used teaching props:
- heirloom varieties, purchased from Native Seeds/SEARCH or through their Community Seed Grants program
- corn
- beans or squash
- a variety of wild edible plants that have been an important part of the Hopi culture, such as portulaca (purslane), amaranth, chenopodium (goosefoot), cleome (bee plant/wild spinach)
- heirloom varieties, purchased from Native Seeds/SEARCH or through their Community Seed Grants program
- Seeds for planting, chosen from above crop varieties but not taken from prop jars
- A cooked or raw tasting sample of one or more of the crop varieties chosen for planting
- Several deep and stable bowls for dividing up and holding seed
- Digging sticks (called so’ya by the Hopi people): wooden (Greasewood and/or oak), or metal (welded metal bar); 1 per pair of students
- A few modern hand trowels, if needed to supplement a lack of digging sticks for each student pair
- Planting measurement tools: rulers, tape measure (to be used alongside traditional Pueblo methods: walking paces and handspans)
- 1 printed copy for each working group adult supervisor of the Handout: Traditional Hopi Planting Techniques (attached)
- 1 printed copy for each working group of Diagram 1: A planting hole in a Hopi maize field (attached)
- Optional: seed garlic for planting into digging sticks holes (Fall only)
- Hole measuring tool (narrow-bottomed travel mug or Solo cup; 3–4 inches wide)
- Wrist watch or stopwatch for timing hole digging
- Flagging tape and tall stakes/poles, tall enough to be seen at a distance
- Journal/notebook and pencil for each student
- White board and markers
- Calculators (one for every two students)
Before You Begin
- Educators/instructors/volunteers should prepare themselves by viewing the following short videos:
- Print copies of Handout: Traditional Hopi Planting Technique : ensure that at least one educator/instructor/volunteer will be available to supervise each planting group and to deliver demonstrations of planting techniques, using this handout.
- Print copies of Diagram 1: A Planting Hole in a Hopi Maize Field.
- Secure and prepare the cooked or raw tasting sample to be used during closing circle.
- Ensure the areas to be used in this class have clearly marked/defined areas or rows for planting and areas for walking. Ideally, plants/rows are labelled with a weather-tolerant label indicating the name of the crop to be planted.
- Borrow or make digging sticks
Long Session
Long Session: Pueblo Lifeways and Sustainability
Format: One approximately 90 minute session
Opening Circle: Questions and Discussion
Survey students’ understanding and/or opinions by verbally sharing the questions or text in italics. Briefly gather input from the students, while steering the discussion to toward the answers listed below the question.
What is the definition of self-sufficiency?
A person or group that is self sufficient is able to provide themselves with what is necessary with little help from others. Examples: people living in a remote wilderness; people doing an expedition into mountain or ocean environments; astronauts in space.
What does the term “ancestral Pueblo people” mean?
An ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States; the ancestors of today’s Pueblo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. Ancestral Pueblo people were very skilled at self sufficiency. Their material culture and their lifeways reflect the innovations and adaptations they developed to survive in a isolated and challenging desert environment. They were resilient.
Show students a map of the United States, and help them to identify the Four Corners region: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.
View the video, More than Planting a Seed:
Video: Length Options (Click on links to load videos.)
6th Grade: total of 18 minutes of video
7th Grade: total of 24 minutes of video
8th Grade: total of 26 minutes of video
Read the following portion of the Hopi creation story:
After their Emergence into the Fourth World, the clans that would one day comprise the Hopi people approached the Guardian Spirit, Ma’saw, in the region that is now northwest Arizona and asked his permission to settle there…. “Whether you can stay here is up to you,” he told them. Masaw warned the clan people that the life he had to offer them was very different from what they had before. To show them that life, Ma’saw gave the people a planting stick (So’ya), a bag of seeds and a gourd of water. He handed them a small ear of blue corn and told them, “Here is my life and spirit. This is what I give you.”
— Wall and Masayesva 2004:435–436
Introduce students to the corn varieties and explore their diversity in size, color, endosperm texture (use a diagram of a corn kernel at this time).
Show students the digging stick and gourd and circulate them, along with the corn seed. Allow students to handle and observe them.
Procedure:
- Divide students into small discussion groups of 3 to 5 students and rearrange their seating so they are sitting in small discussion circles. Count-off the groups, from 1 to 3, to assign each of them a discussion question number. Read aloud each of the discussion questions to the corresponding groups.
- Each group should nominate and indicate to the instructor who will be their “Scribe”: the person who will begin the discussion by rereading the discussion question to the group, and then record the group’s answers, to share with the class. Hand out the correct discussion question sheet and a pen to each scribe.
- For a total of approximately 5 minutes, groups should discuss their discussion question and report back on their ideas.
- After about 2 minutes, give the groups a time-check and a reminder: scribes need to record at least a few complete sentence answers to share. At this time, scribes should re-read their discussion question to their group to ensure the discussion is still focused and relevant.
- Come back together as a group. The “scribe” from each group shares their group’s ideas with the class.
- The instructor helps to connect the students’ answers with the information presented below, to help them draw conclusions from their group’s ideas.
Question #1:
Without direct instructions from the Guardian Spirit, Masaw, how did the first Hopi farmers learn how to dryland farm in the southwest?
Through years of trial and error, agricultural experiments, and long-term observations, they became experts at:
- Understanding plant and animal behavior
- Knowing soil types and measuring moisture content
- Predicting weather patterns
- Predicting and directing water runoff
Question #2:
Why is corn, in particular, so important to every aspect of
traditional Hopi life?
How is corn and agriculture viewed in our modern culture?
- Corn farming in a drought prone environment is difficult. Helping corn plants to survive becomes a metaphor for how people can survive, as life is often difficult. Dryland corn farming teaches Hopi people the value of patience, humility, respect and cooperation.
- Hopi and Ancestral Pueblo people grew food for their own survival. They knew exactly how their food was grown and where it came from.
- Modern agriculture has disconnected many modern people from an awareness of where and how their food is grown or produced. Many modern people expect their food to be delivered to their towns and houses, already processed, preserved and packaged.
- Many modern farmers view corn as a large scale cash crop; they know that, to produce most corn today, a large water supply (irrigation), fertilizers, and machinery are required.
Question #3:
After examining the different kinds of Hopi corn, why do you think there are so many varieties of traditional corn? What are some of the threats from GMO corn on Hopi corn?
- Genes provide the instructions to build a living thing. If you change one of the genes, you rewrite the instructions.
- Humans have been manipulating the genes of plants for 10,000 years, without harming ecosystems or humans, in a process called breeding—mixing and matching the characteristics found within one species of plant. It has resulted in an increase in diversity in crop plants, benefiting human health and increasing the chance that communities will survive environmental challenges like drought.
- Diversity is important when growing crops in challenging environments, such as the Hopi do. The Hopi people have survived on their land in part because they have bred over 17 different named varieties of corn, each with special talents for adapting and overcoming threats like drought, and excelling at essential skills like long-term storage.
- GMO: this acronym stands for Genetically Modified Organism. They are created by mixing genes from very different species in order to meet a need or fix a problem in agriculture such as resisting disease and pests, surviving frost and drought.
- The difference between genetically modifying plants and breeding
them:
- Breeding crops: plant species’ genes are changed over thousands of years
- Genetically modifying crops: plant species’ genes are changed when a gene, sometimes from a non-plant species, is inserted to create a new species that has never before existed on Earth and arrives almost overnight without evolving alongside its environment.
- It is hard to control or predict the mixing of genes plants. Once GMOs are involved, unintended consequences can result. The impacts of GMO seed on traditional crops and ecosystems are being actively studied by agricultural scientists. In the meantime, the Hopi must protect their corn’s genes from mixing with genetically modified genes. They must protect the purity of the corn varieties that are at the center of their culture.
| Heirloom or Ancient Crops and Seeds | Increased Diversity in Corn Seed saving provides free, environment-adapted seeds every year |
| GMO Crops and Seeds | Decreased Diversity in Corn Seed saving can’t be done; seed that is not environment-adapted must be bought every year |
With students remaining seated with their small discussion groups, survey students’ understanding and/or opinions by verbally sharing the questions or text in italics. Briefly gather input from the students, while steering the discussion to toward the answers listed below the question.
Introduce students to the term self-sufficiency by writing it on the whiteboard and reading it aloud. Have students work in small groups of three or four students to discuss the meaning of self-sufficiency. Invite each group to share with the class while guiding the discussion toward the the following definition: A person or group that is self sufficient is able to provide themselves with what is necessary with little help from others. Examples: people living in a remote wilderness; people doing an expedition into mountain or ocean environments; astronauts in space.
Ask students the following questions and record their responses on the whiteboard:
How will humans achieve self sufficiency in the future? For example, how will we make sure we are able to feed the human population as it increases and the health of the planet decreases?
Point out that being self sufficient on planet Earth requires that we:
- know our history (how we have taken care of ourselves in the past)
- carefully craft innovative solutions (how we will take care of ourselves in the future)
Have students work in groups of three or four to engage in a discussion about each of the following questions. Present each question one at a time and allow no more than two minutes of discussion per question
- Do you live in an isolated place? What would happen if the town you live in were cut off from receiving food from outside sources? How many roads lead to your hometown?
- What kind of events could (or have in the past) destroyed or blocked these roads? Flash floods, mudslides, road construction dynamite, wildfires.
- An important aspect of self sufficiency is food. How does your town stock the shelves of the grocery stores? Food is delivered by transport trucks. Towns like Cortez could quickly become isolated from receiving food and materials from outside sources.
- What does it mean to have “food security”? A community has “food security” when safe, nutritious food is available without people or food having to travel great distances.
Students return to working with their small discussion groups. Outline the final activity:
Each group will work as a team to make Space Travel Self-Sufficiency Plan based on the following hypothetical scenario (read aloud):
Healthy human life on Earth is no longer possible due to environmental damage. All humans will leave in fleets of spacecraft where they plan to live for 50 human generations or 1000 years. Each spaceship has a population of people that must act as a community. Each community is named after their ship. The first ship to leave will be “Discovery One”. It will establish the “Discovery One” community. Each community must decide what what is essential to take with them from among the objects and technologies that currently exist.
Each student group will work together as a spacecraft community for 15 minutes. Distribute to each a piece of chart paper and a marker. During this time, the instructor aids the groups by being a timekeeper. They must accomplish the following tasks to prepare for their escape from Earth:
- Decide on a name for their ship/community (1 minute)
- Decide which community member will be: (2 minutes)
- “The Scribe”: a person with good handwriting and drawing skills and will draw, write and speak for the group, reading their plan aloud at the end.
- “The Checker”: a person who asks good questions and can focus the discussion on the most important questions about survival.
Being guided by The Scribe and The Checker, the groups draw a large, basic outline of a spaceship that takes up most of the chart paper. The scribe fills the outline with words that describe items or technologies they want to bring. (5 minutes)
At the halfway point in the groups’ work time (approximately 8 minutes into group work time), briefly regroup as a class, and give the students the following clarifications:
- 6th grade: encourage students to focus on items that will create systems that resemble healthy ecosystems. Remind all groups that they cannot include any technology or inventions that have yet to be invented.
- 7th & 8th grade: Review the concept that the water cycle is a closed system. Inform students that the items they bring should account for this and other closed systems, like trash/compost/waste, in their spacecraft. Remind all groups that they cannot include any technology or inventions that have yet to be invented.
Students resume planning and make changes to their spacecraft to account for these ideas. (approximately 7 minutes).
Closing Circle
Invite each group to present their plan of self-sufficiency to the class. Have any of the groups made the connection between their spacecraft and the actual planet Earth we live on? Our spaceship is called Planet Earth. Read the following statement:
We are already living on a spacecraft; the Earth is spinning through space holding human communities. We are separated from space by a thin layer of atmosphere; the distance from the surface of the planet to outer space is barely 60 miles. Earth is the only planet we know of that sustains human life, despite searching space for 60 years.
Explain to students that many ancient cultures throughout the world have created agricultural practices that were sustainable and self-sufficient. Point out that over the next couple of weeks students will be learning about ancestral Pueblo people, their farming practices, and how these practices can inform our own sustainable relationship to the land.
Engage students in a brief discussion to address the following questions:
What does sustainability mean to you? Do the Hopi/Ancestral Pueblo people meet your ideas of sustainability? Students explain their opinions. Survey the students for their understanding of the following quote:
“Indigenous education is really a ten thousand year strategic plan.”
— Gregory Cajete
Write on the whiteboard:There are 7.3 billion people riding along on spacecraft Planet Earth. We must COMBINE our ancestral agriculture techniques,materials and principles we relied on in the past WITH the innovative technologies and materials of the future.
+
Future Methods and Materials and Innovations
=
Self-Sufficiency & Food Security
Short Session 1
Short Session 1: Sustainability Spaceship
Format: One approximately 45 minute session
Opening Circle: Questions and Discussion
Survey students’ understanding and/or opinions by verbally sharing the questions or text in italics. Briefly gather input from the students, while steering the discussion to toward the answers listed below the question.
Introduce students to the term self-sufficiency by writing it on the whiteboard and reading it aloud. Have students work in small groups of three or four students to discuss the meaning of self-sufficiency. Invite each group to share with the class while guiding the discussion toward the the following definition: A person or group that is self sufficient is able to provide themselves with what is necessary with little help from others. Examples: people living in a remote wilderness; people doing an expedition into mountain or ocean environments; astronauts in space.
Ask students the following questions and record their responses on the whiteboard:
How will humans achieve self sufficiency in the future? For example, how will we make sure we are able to feed the human population as it increases and the health of the planet decreases?
Point out that being self sufficient on planet Earth requires that we:
- know our history (how we have taken care of ourselves in the past)
- carefully craft innovative solutions (how we will take care of ourselves in the future)
Have students work in groups of three or four to engage in a discussion about each of the following questions. Present each question one at a time and allow no more than two minutes of discussion per question
- Do you live in an isolated place? What would happen if the town you live in were cut off from receiving food from outside sources? How many roads lead to your hometown?
- What kind of events could (or have in the past) destroyed or blocked these roads? Flash floods, mudslides, road construction dynamite, wildfires.
- An important aspect of self sufficiency is food. How does your town stock the shelves of the grocery stores? Food is delivered by transport trucks. Towns like Cortez could quickly become isolated from receiving food and materials from outside sources.
- What does it mean to have “food security”? A community has “food security” when safe, nutritious food is available without people or food having to travel great distances.
Procedure:
Divide students into small discussion groups of 3 to 5 students and rearrange their seating so they are sitting in small discussion circles. Outline the activity:
Each group will work as a team to make Space Travel Self-Sufficiency Plan based on the following hypothetical scenario (read aloud):
Healthy human life on Earth is no longer possible due to environmental damage. All humans will leave in fleets of spacecraft where they plan to live for 50 human generations or 1000 years. Each spaceship has a population of people that must act as a community. Each community is named after their ship. The first ship to leave will be “Discovery One”. It will establish the “Discovery One” community. Each community must decide what what is essential to take with them from among the objects and technologies that currently exist.
Each student group will work together as a spacecraft community for 15 minutes. Distribute to each a piece of chart paper and a marker. During this time, the instructor aids the groups by being a timekeeper. They must accomplish the following tasks to prepare for their escape from Earth:
- Decide on a name for their ship/community (1 minute)
- Decide which community member will be: (2 minutes)
- “The Scribe”: a person with good handwriting and drawing skills and will draw, write and speak for the group, reading their plan aloud at the end.
- “The Checker”: a person who asks good questions and can focus the discussion on the most important questions about survival.
Being guided by The Scribe and The Checker, the groups draw a large, basic outline of a spaceship that takes up most of the chart paper. The scribe fills the outline with words that describe items or technologies they want to bring. (5 minutes)
At the halfway point in the groups’ work time (approximately 8 minutes into group work time), briefly regroup as a class, and give the students the following clarifications:
- 6th grade: encourage students to focus on items that will create systems that resemble healthy ecosystems. Remind all groups that they cannot include any technology or inventions that have yet to be invented.
- 7th & 8th grade: Review the concept that the water cycle is a closed system. Inform students that the items they bring should account for this and other closed systems, like trash/compost/waste, in their spacecraft. Remind all groups that they cannot include any technology or inventions that have yet to be invented.
Students resume planning and make changes to their spacecraft to account for these ideas. (approximately 7 minutes).
Closing Circle:
Invite each group to present their plan of self-sufficiency to the class. Have any of the groups made the connection between their spacecraft and the actual planet Earth we live on? Our spaceship is called Planet Earth. Read the following statement:
We are already living on a spacecraft; the Earth is spinning through space holding human communities. We are separated from space by a thin layer of atmosphere; the distance from the surface of the planet to outer space is barely 60 miles. Earth is the only planet we know of that sustains human life, despite searching space for 60 years.
Explain to students that many ancient cultures throughout the world have created agricultural practices that were sustainable and self-sufficient. Point out that over the next couple of weeks students will be learning about ancestral Pueblo people, their farming practices, and how these practices can inform our own sustainable relationship to the land.
Short Session 2
Short Session 2: The Pueblo Lifeways
Format: One approximately 45 minute session
Opening Circle: Questions and Discussion
Survey students’ understanding and/or opinions by verbally sharing the questions or text in italics. Briefly gather input from the students, while steering the discussion to toward the answers listed below the question.
What is the definition of self-sufficiency?
A person or group that is self sufficient is able to provide themselves with what is necessary with little help from others. Examples: people living in a remote wilderness; people doing an expedition into mountain or ocean environments; astronauts in space.
What does the term “ancestral Pueblo people” mean?
An ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States; the ancestors of today’s Pueblo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. Ancestral Pueblo people were very skilled at self sufficiency. Their material culture and their lifeways reflect the innovations and adaptations they developed to survive in a isolated and challenging desert environment. They were resilient.
Show students a map of the United States, and help them to identify the Four Corners region: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.
View the video, More than Planting a Seed:
Video: Length Options (Click on links to load videos.)
6th Grade: total of 18 minutes of video
7th Grade: total of 24 minutes of video
8th Grade: total of 26 minutes of video
Read the following portion of the Hopi creation story:
After their Emergence into the Fourth World, the clans that would one day comprise the Hopi people approached the Guardian Spirit, Ma’saw, in the region that is now northwest Arizona and asked his permission to settle there…. “Whether you can stay here is up to you,” he told them. Masaw warned the clan people that the life he had to offer them was very different from what they had before. To show them that life, Ma’saw gave the people a planting stick (So’ya), a bag of seeds and a gourd of water. He handed them a small ear of blue corn and told them, “Here is my life and spirit. This is what I give you.”
– (Wall and Masayesva 2004:435–436)
Introduce students to the corn varieties and explore their diversity in size, color, endosperm texture (use a diagram of a corn kernel at this time).
Show students the digging stick and gourd and circulate them, along with the corn seed. Allow students to handle and observe them.
Procedure:
- Divide students into small discussion groups of 3 to 5 students and rearrange their seating so they are sitting in small discussion circles. Count-off the groups, from 1 to 3, to assign each of them a discussion question number. Read aloud each of the discussion questions to the corresponding groups.
- Each group should nominate and indicate to the instructor who will be their “Scribe”: the person who will begin the discussion by rereading the discussion question to the group, and then record the group’s answers, to share with the class. Hand out the correct discussion question sheet and a pen to each scribe.
- For a total of approximately 5 minutes, groups should discuss their discussion question and report back on their ideas.
- After about 2 minutes, give the groups a time-check and a reminder: scribes need to record at least a few complete sentence answers to share. At this time, scribes should re-read their discussion question to their group to ensure the discussion is still focused and relevant.
- Come back together as a group. The “scribe” from each group shares their group’s ideas with the class.
- The instructor helps to connect the students’ answers with the information presented below, to help them draw conclusions from their group’s ideas.
Question #1:
Without direct instructions from the Guardian Spirit, Masaw, how did the first Hopi farmers learn how to dryland farm in the southwest?
Through years of trial and error, agricultural experiments, and long-term observations, they became experts at:
- Understanding plant and animal behavior
- Knowing soil types and measuring moisture content
- Predicting weather patterns
- Predicting and directing water runoff
Question #2:
Why is corn, in particular, so important to every aspect of
traditional Hopi life?
How is corn and agriculture viewed in our modern culture?
- Corn farming in a drought prone environment is difficult. Helping corn plants to survive becomes a metaphor for how people can survive, as life is often difficult. Dryland corn farming teaches Hopi people the value of patience, humility, respect and cooperation.
- Hopi and Ancestral Pueblo people grew food for their own survival. They knew exactly how their food was grown and where it came from.
- Modern agriculture has disconnected many modern people from an awareness of where and how their food is grown or produced. Many modern people expect their food to be delivered to their towns and houses, already processed, preserved and packaged.
- Many modern farmers view corn as a large scale cash crop; they know that, to produce most corn today, a large water supply (irrigation), fertilizers, and machinery are required.
Question #3:
After examining the different kinds of Hopi corn, why do you think there are so many varieties of traditional corn? What are some of the threats from GMO corn on Hopi corn?
- Genes provide the instructions to build a living thing. If you change one of the genes, you rewrite the instructions.
- Humans have been manipulating the genes of plants for 10,000 years, without harming ecosystems or humans, in a process called breeding—mixing and matching the characteristics found within one species of plant. It has resulted in an increase in diversity in crop plants, benefiting human health and increasing the chance that communities will survive environmental challenges like drought.
- Diversity is important when growing crops in challenging environments, such as the Hopi do. The Hopi people have survived on their land in part because they have bred over 17 different named varieties of corn, each with special talents for adapting and overcoming threats like drought, and excelling at essential skills like long-term storage.
- GMO: this acronym stands for Genetically Modified Organism. They are created by mixing genes from very different species in order to meet a need or fix a problem in agriculture such as resisting disease and pests, surviving frost and drought.
- The difference between genetically modifying plants and breeding
them:
- Breeding crops: plant species’ genes are changed over thousands of years
- Genetically modifying crops: plant species’ genes are changed when a gene, sometimes from a non-plant species, is inserted to create a new species that has never before existed on Earth and arrives almost overnight without evolving alongside its environment.
- It is hard to control or predict the mixing of genes plants. Once GMOs are involved, unintended consequences can result. The impacts of GMO seed on traditional crops and ecosystems are being actively studied by agricultural scientists. In the meantime, the Hopi must protect their corn’s genes from mixing with genetically modified genes. They must protect the purity of the corn varieties that are at the center of their culture.
| Heirloom or Ancient Crops and Seeds | Increased Diversity in Corn Seed saving provides free, environment-adapted seeds every year |
| GMO Crops and Seeds | Decreased Diversity in Corn Seed saving can’t be done; seed that is not environment-adapted must be bought every year |
Closing Circle: (5 minutes)
Engage students in a brief discussion to address the following questions:
What does sustainability mean to you? Do the Hopi/Ancestral Pueblo people meet your ideas of sustainability? Students explain their opinions. Survey the students for their understanding of the following quote:
“Indigenous education is really a ten thousand year strategic plan.” – Gregory Cajete
Write on the whiteboard:There are 7.3 billion people riding along on spacecraft Planet Earth. We must COMBINE our ancestral agriculture techniques,materials and principles we relied on in the past WITH the innovative technologies and materials of the future.
+
Future Methods and Materials and Innovations
=
Self-Sufficiency & Food Security
CO Standards
This lesson plan was designed to align with the following Montezuma School to Farm Project Garden Education Standards and state Of Colorado Academic Standards:
| Montezuma School to Farm Project’s Garden Education Standards | Colorado Academic Standards | |
| 6th |
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| 7th |
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| 8th |
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Further information in regards to the Colorado State Standards may be found here.
Handout: Traditional Hopi planting techniques
Traditional Hopi planting techniques for Dryland Farming of Corn
- Spacing is an important consideration for plant health, root development and good pollination. Unlike the conventional practice of planting seeds in a row and measuring the space between seeds, the Hopi plant several seeds together in a clump and pace off, with measured steps, the space between clumps. Spacing in a Hopi garden is 2–3 adult paces/steps, or 4–6 feet, between clumps. Widely spaced plant clumps creates groups of reservoirs of moisture for each clump.
- To plant, the ground is first scraped with the hands or the side of the foot to remove dust/loose top soil on the surface to the depth of hardpan or compacted soil. The soil that comes out of the hole must not be tossed far away from the opening. It must be pulled back only as far as necessary. This creates a 2x2 foot basin.
- In the center of the basin, the digging stick, or so’ya is used to create a hole. The correct depth of the hole is reached when the soil’s moisture can be seen and felt. The hole should be the shape of a cone, no wider than 4 inches, and 6–10 inches deep.
- About 12 seeds are planted into each hole. Later, when the plants are approximately 1 foot tall, the clump is thinned to about 6 plants.
- The soil must be placed back in the hole in same order that it was removed: the moist soil that was the last to be removed is the first to be returned.
- To finish, some of the loose topsoil from the edge of the basin is brushed and scattered over the filled-in hole. This creates a “dust mulch” that seals in moisture.
- Two to three adult paces/steps are taken to the next planting clump location.
Traditional Hopi planting techniques for Dryland Farming of Bean, Squash and Melon
- Repeat step #2 from Corn Planting Techniques, with the exception that the basin created is only 1x1 foot.
- These varieties are planted deep enough that each seed is surrounded by moist soil, approximately 5–7 inches deep.
- Four to five seeds are planted in each hole. Later, when the plants are approximately 6 inches tall, the clump is thinned to 2 plants.
- To finish, some of the loose topsoil from the edge of the basin is used as a dust mulch to cover the hole.
- One adult pace/step is taken to the next planting location.
- Traditionally these varieties are planted in separate areas but could be interplanted between corn clumps.