What Potatoes Have Taught Me

The pilgrimage to the garden was urged on many years ago by a need to escape the inane chatter and blather of the theological sock puppets. I wanted to get a straighter story so I quietly took a back pew in the garden and listened. There have been many excellent sermons over the years; neither time nor blogspace is available to recount them all. But I will summerize a few of them here.

Did you know that as a potato converts its starch for plant growth, as soon as the tips of the vines reach sunlight they cease to convert the starch and rely entirely on photosynthesis? I've never read that in a gardening book, as if it weren't important. But it's a fact, one need only be observant. It only makes sense. The potato is native to the high Andes where, although tropical, the altitude subjects the potato to unpredictable frosts. It is only prudent of the potato to grow its vines by mean of photosynthesis lest they be nipped off by frost. Then it will have plenty of reserves to recover after the tops have been killed.

Potatoes taught me a lot of such things about diversion of plant resources, water conservation, pest avoidance, etc. For example, how do you poison a bug that eats poisonous potato leaves for a living?! You don't, at least not with chemicals. Best to foil them and avoid them. But the sermons of potatoes went far deeper than that.

The potato famine that led to the starvation of millions in the 1840's was a warning and a foretaste of what is going to happen to us because of monocropping agribusines. The curious thing is that the Spanish found the Andeans growing many hundreds of different cultivars of potatoes and yet only three cultivars made it to Europe and to Ireland only one. When the fungal blight particularly suited to that cultivar appeared, potato eaters were defenseless.

The tale is told that many generations ago a begnin king was concerned that as his subjects walked the stony roads and paths, their feet were bruised and battered. His advisors suggested that he decree that all the roads should be covered with oxhides to save the people's feet. The cost would have been enormous and the resources of the kingdom would have been squandered in the attempt. But a wise old hermit came forward and suggested that instead of covering all the roads with oxhides, the king should have the people cut small pieces of oxhides, strap these to their feet, and this the oxhide carpet would go along with them wherever they went. Thus came shoes.

As bizzar as this may seem, we have been doing the very same thing with our food sources. The Andeans had small terraced plots of mountian ground on which to grow their food. Some were wet and some were dry, some cold and some warm, some got the morning sun, some the evening sun and some got sun all day long. They cultivated a type of potato to grow in each of the many different types of biomes that were available to them. The potato that grew well in the moist cool plot that got sun in the morning did not grow well in the warm dry plot that got the afternoon sun. So one finds in the Andes to this day potatoes of every size, texture, shape, color, flavor because the agricultural land is what it is. Better to find a potato to fit the plot than force the plot to fit the potato.

Modern agribusiness does just the opposite. It selects one variety of plant and then tries to change the Earth itself to fit it. It drains swamps, floods deserts, poisons the plants, salts the ground, all in an attempt to cover the roads in oxhides rather than put on some shoes. And like our legendary kingdom, our resources are just about squandered outright in the attempt.

I haven't the inclination to change Earth. As well to attempt to change the moon for all the profit it will reap us in the end.

The Three Sisters

The Haudenosaunee (They Dwell in Long Houses) say that a being called the Sky Holder dwelt in the Sky-World and beside his lodge stood the Great Tree of Light, so called because the flowers of this tree gave off a great light. The Sky Holder was caretaker of the tree but his wife wanted the tree uprooted for she was convinced that beneath it must surely lie a world even more wonderful than their own. Finally the Sky Holder gave into her and uprooted the tree leaving a great hole in the Sky World. As his wife leaned to peer over the edge and see that was beneath, she fell through the hole into the world of darkness and endless water below. As she fell, the creatures of the world below understood that she had the power to create life so the birds interlocked their wings and caught her. But the world was endless water and there was no place to put her. So muskrat dived to the bottom of the water and brought up mud and put it on the back of the snapping turtle and this was where the wife of The Sky Holder was set. She began to walk windershins around on the mud and as she walked, it expanded in ever widening circles and became the land.

She then gave birth to a daughter and all the male beings of that world took on human form and became suitors to her daughter. The daughter chose the being who wore leggings with scalloped fringes and a large robe on his back, the Turtle Being. He laid two arrows on her as she slept and she became pregnant and bore twins. The second twin was born through her armpit and so she died in childbirth. Her mother buried her in the ground and from her body grew Corn, Beans, and Squash; the Three Sisters. She became known as Earth Mother.

Her first son whose name was He Grasps the Sky With Both Hands placed Grandmother Moon and Elder Brother Sun in the sky as well as the Morning Star and the Milky Way which is the pathway to the Sky-World. He also created day and night and the seasons and every animal and plant and mineral. The elder son came to be known as Sonkwaiatison, the Creator.

Thus the Three Sisters are siblings of the Creator Himself and were before the world and before time.

Today the children and I made our annual pilgrimage to the corn patches to clear them of last years haulms and prepare them for this year's Three Sisters. The Three Sisters is the spiritual heart of the garden. Our agricultural method is from the stone age and is little different from how corn was grown in North America for several thousand years. The popular view is that the Indians in North America were hunters who did a little farming on the side but all the evidence points to them being master horticulturists who did a little hunting on the side.

Oh, we might be more inclined to use compost rather than dead fish in the hills of corn, but give or take a few such inessentials and our experience with corn spans the millenia. Hills are drawn up with a hoe about every four feet in all directions and about 30" across. Five or six corn seed are planted in each hill and it is covered with compost. When the corn is about a foot high, a few bean seeds are put in each hill and one squash or pumpkin seed. The beans climb the corn stalks and fix nitrogen in the soil. The broad squash leaves shade out the weeds without interfering with the corn or beans. Racoons don't like negotiating the canopy of squash leaves and are much more reluctant to raid the corn.

Corn is a promiscuous plant and so different varieties of corn must be separated by enough distance to discourage cross pollination. Several varieties are grown here but the mainstay is the pearly white large seeded Hicory Cane or Hickory King corn:

Still of the night
moon on the wane
sun deep in sleep.
Cricket, bird, and wind lay low
as rhythms of the earth and sky
suspend
prepare to turn.

Awake in the dark
you know
I know
We many not make it.
Mother Earth may not make it.
We teeter
on the turning point.

Against the downward pull
against the falter
of your heart and mine.
I offer you a gift.
a seed to greet the sunrise.
Ginitsi Selu,
Corn, Mother of Us All.

(Wilma Mankiller)