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Enduring Wheat Seeds, Was Re: Natural raised beds

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

----- Original Message ----- From: margaret lauterbach <mlaute@micron.net>>
> On the subject of adobe, I'd like to add parenthetical information that I
find interesting. Apparently some of the history of crops such as maize is
due to biohistorians' (or whatever they call themselves) pricking out seed
heads from dated adobe. Wheat in 1100 A.D.? Uno momento...Margaret L
>

This isn't totally off topic since I often grow a patch of durum wheat in a
40" X 80" earthen berm sqft bed in the blazing Arizona sun which I now
understand is the same as growing it in adobe blocks.

Wild rice, buckwheat and many small-grained grasses are native to the
Americas but we had always been taught that wheat was introduced to the
Americas by the Europeans well after 1100 AD, probably by the Jamestown
settlers in the east and the Spaniards in the west.  Actually, wheat was
used by humans well before AD1100, probably even by neolithic man.  Wheat
seeds found in Iraq have been dated at about 6,700 years.  Biblical
accounts written about 1,600 BC mention rye and wheat (or spelt,.depending
on the translated version).  Spelt is a type of wheat still grown on poor
soil in some areas - we grew crops of it back on the farm as recently as
the 1940s.
As to viability of old seeds, according to ethnobotanist Dr. Gary Paul
Nabham his book "Enduring Seeds", the oldest known viable seeds were lotus
seed found in Manchuria.  The original age estimate was 1,040 years.  The
estimate was later reduced to 100 years but has now been set at 440-460
based on "refined" and geological studies of the lake bed where they were
found.  -Olin

Sent 8:52 PM MST


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