home garden I

"several thousand years before european colonists and african slaves would make that region an integral part of the capitalist western world, the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard grew corn as their dietary mainstay."

"traditional european crops and agricultural techniques had to be rejected as unsuitable. indigenous techniques and plants were used instead because they allowed the land to be used immediately. these methods relied on fire in order to clear the forrest and allowed for sowing crops between the stumps without uprooting them first."
Corn & Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance" [warman 2003]

"it was easy to make a hill in the ashes where a brush heap had been fired, or in soil that was free of roots and stumps; but there were many stumps in the field, left over from the previous summer's clearing. if the planter found a stump stood where a hill should be, she placed the hill on the side of the stump or beyond it, no matter how close this brought the hill to the next in the row. thus, the corn hills did not stand at even distances in the row in the first year..."
Native American Gardening: Buffalobird-Woman's Guide to Traditional Methods. [wilson 1917]

traditional maize needed room to be productive...it had a high ratio of grain returned for grain sown...around 150:1 compared to 9:1 for wheat ( this is traditional, pre-industrial agriculture we're talking here not transgenetic industrial stuff )european colonists turned to maize as a staple because it was adapted to the environment producing more grain than european imports could...much of the genetic changes made to industrial corn have been geared towards increasing its ability to grow closer together and still produce large returns of grain...that's why the corn you see in the fields is spaced a foot apart by the mechanical planters while buffalobird-woman made her corn hills at least three feet apart..." i would plant six or eight grains in a hill"[wilson 1917. p22] to insure at least on germinated plant per hill...even spread out across a field ( wheat, oats, or rye were simply broadcast into the field ) maize out produced the crops europeans brought with them until both the crops and techniques were adapted to the american environment.

the top photo is of the maize ears on campus.
the second photo is of maize support roots.
the third is of northern tepuhan teosinte support roots.
the fourth photo is of a maize ear that is just emerging from a plant in my back yard.