How on earth would you feed a city of over 200,000 people when the land around you was a swampy lake? Seems like an impossible task, but the Aztec managed it by creating floating gardens known as chinampas, then they farmed them intensively.
These ingenious creations were built up from the lake bed by piling layers of mud, decaying vegetation and reeds. This was a great way of recycling waste from the capital city Tenochtitlan. Each garden was framed and held together by wooden poles bound by reeds and then anchored to the lake floor with finely pruned willow trees. The Aztecs also dredged mud from the base of the canals which both kept the waterways clear and rejuvenate the nutrient levels in the gardens.
A variety of crops were grown, most commonly maize or corn, beans, chillies, squash, tomatoes, edible greens such as quelite and amaranth. Colourful flowers were also grown, essential produce for religious festivals and ceremonies. Each plot was systematically planned, the effective use of seedbeds allowed continuous planting and harvesting of crops.
Between each garden was a canal which enabled canoe transport. Fish and birds populated the water and were an additional source of food. [x]
This is literally so cool. Not only does it contribute to spacial efficiency, but the canals would easily keep pests, weeds, and possibly even diseases out of the respective plots. Companion planting and bio-intensive planting would be so much easier. Water-wise systems would be inherently present. Plus it looks so super neat aesthetically. I am just all about this.
Indigenous civilizations invented sustainable development way before there was a term for it.
Time: 1 hour 23 minutes; average pace 35.37 min/mile
Equipment: snow boots (because I still don’t have proper hiking boots); MapMyHike App
Apparently I’m doing obligatory bad selfies with Zella now…
Trail conditions/difficulty: sloppy/mildly challenging. The weather was cool, low 40′s with only a light wind, but positively balmy after the polar vortex. With the warmer weather and snow melt the trails were, predictably, fairly sloppy. Lots of mud and leaf litter and a few scattered patches of ice, but not too slippery all things considered. A few steep-ish hills and several narrow sections of trail meant the dogs had to be off leash for everyone’s safety at several points. Both boys decided they wanted to come along today. The 9yo kept declaring (loudly) that “this is BEAUTIFUL!” He’s not wrong.
Camp Camfield has gotten very popular in the past few years, and there were already 3 cars in the parking lot when we got there. We were passed by a mountain biker and a hiker using trekking poles. Ranger really wanted to keep an eye on the other trail users as they approached, but both dogs did very well and behaved themselves.
The kids’ outside voices did a great job scaring off the local wildlife. But it did mean that the 3 deer that we saw got enough of a heads up that the dogs never saw them.
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury, “Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of ‘Fahrenheit 451’”, The Seattle Times (12 March 1993)
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