[Sca-cooks] planting fish

[Terry Decker]

Using fish, seaweed, manure or other decaying organic matter as fertilizer 
started sometime in the late Neolithic and is a common practice in many 
agrarian societies.  The particular organic matter depends on what is most 
available.  Even today, we use fertilizers based on fish, seaweed, manure 
and peat.  The primary difference is we process the basic ingredients into 
to forms that are easier to use and may produce greater benefit faster.

Fertilization reduces the need to move agrarian communities to new farmland, 
as occurs with slash and burn practices, and permits the growth of large 
stable societies.

For the Eastern tribes, fish was a readily available fertilizer, so fish got 
planted with the seeds.  An additional point is it was common practice to 
plant maize, squash and beans together in mounds where the plants could 
support each other physically and nutritionally.  The method is referred to 
as the Three Sisters and is a forerunner to today's methods of companion 
planting.

And just to assure you that fish fertilizer is not a legend, here is an 
excerpt from a letter from one E.W. of Plymouth to a friend in London:

"We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six 
acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we 
manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great 
abundance...".

"A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English 
Plantation Settled at Plymouth", London, 1622.

Bear

> Wasn't one of the tricks that the American Natives taught the  European 
> immigrants to put a fish in with the maize seed when they  planted it? Or 
> is that another one of those urban legends?
>
> Stefan

We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six 
acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we 
manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great 
abundance...

"A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English 
Plantation Settled at Plymouth", London, 1622