Cowlitz Camas Planting Day in Early December

Every year for four years now the Cowlitz Tribe has put on a Camas Planting Day on a weekend in early December. They are reintroducing Camas (qáwmʼ in their language) to their community garden, and they could use some help. It is a great event to learn more about this plant.

Here is how they described their 2023 event:

Join the staff from the Cowlitz Tribe Natural Resources Department and Cowlitz Garden to plant camas bulbs for a third year as part of the Gospodor property restoration project. This event is Saturday, December 9 from 11-2pm.

We will be planting common camas (Camassia quamash) bulbs, learning about camas, and a hot lunch will be provided! Please dress warmly and have raingear. We'll have a bonfire to warm up and enjoy some smores by.
Everyone is welcome!

The event will be held at the Gospodor Property at 370 Camus Rd., Toledo, WA 98591. Due to limited parking on-site, we will have transit vehicles making trips back and forth between the site and the Park & Ride located nearby starting around 11:00AM.

If you are heading North on I-5, you will take Exit 63 and turn right. Immediately after turning, the Park & Ride will be the gravel lot on your right before Camus Rd.

If you are heading South on I-5, you will take Exit 63 and turn left. After you pass over the freeway, the Park & Ride will be the gravel lot on your right before Camus Rd.

More details about the event will be sent out to all participants the week before.

If you have any questions about this event, please contact garden@cowlitz.org or call at 360-295-1570.

This is super important, too bad I'm quite a ways away down here.  I hope it goes well and the camas root plants thrive and become tasty food later on as well as restoring the environment.

It's today! I will try to take some pictures and share anything I learn.

Wonderful, I wish I could have gotten up there. Maybe next year.

It would be great to have you there next year, Bethany.

I had a great time and learned a lot. Thank you to the Cowlitz tribe for their hospitality and all the knowledge they shared. I arrived a little late on a drizzly Saturday morning. They pointed me towards a shovel with a skinny blade and a field full of people and black nursery trays. I found a full tray and started planting Camas. I finished my tray of plants and then wandered over to the bonfire. One of the Cowlitz elders was talking to a man with a traditional digging stick. Surely these men would know about Camas!

They introduced themselves. Nic, the one with the digging stick, told me all about Camas and the other plants that it likes to live with. I will try to relay the information that he told me. Camas is a geophyte, it loves the earth and it loves burrowing deeper into the earth. It appreciates medicinal fire and will burrow deeper into the ground when a fire occurs. Camas wants to grow in a Camas-place with it's cousins Chocolate Lily, Violet and other plants.

On the first new moon of May his people (he is of Salish heritage) would harvest Death Camas from the camas prairies. Death Camas provided poison for their arrows and a topical analgesic. Chocolate Lily (also called Northern Rice Root) would be the reward for harvesting the Death Camas. They would then be able to harvest Camas in the Fall.

We talked for a good long while until it was time to plant some more Camas. I was very curious how he was going to use his digging stick. He took a bulb out of the potting soil. Then he stuck his stick in the very soft and wet ground. How do I describe the motion? I will say that the term "Digging stick" does not bring to mind the way that he used this tool. He did not dig, and he did not drill. He merely stuck the end of the stick in the ground, and then twirled the top of the stick in a circle, pushing down a bit. The end of the stick was not flat or sharpened. It was rounded from use. He did this until he had an indentation in the ground about two or three inches deep. Then he tossed some compost in the hole, put the bulb on top, and covered it with more compost. A very simple process, aided by the wet ground.

Let's see, the tribe passed out a nice long handout titled "Who is Camas." I will see if they have released a copy online. But it includes a long excerpt from the "Tend, Gather and Grow" curriculum that was developed by various tribal members to teach about plants that the natives of the Northwest used. It is available at https://www.goodgrub.org/tend-gather-grow It lists plants that like to grow with Camas:

Common Camas
Great Camas
Chocolate Lily
Kinnikinnick
Potentilla
Puget Balsamroot
Roemer's Fescue
Henderson's Shootingstar
Violet
Wild Strawberry
Yampah (wild carrot)
Yarrow

Nic added that white oaks and Camas also do well together.

Wow, that is awesome, thanks for sharing your experience. I would love to come next year and meet people and learn more.

They had a big pot of chicken soup and it was delicious. I remembered that I should mention that.

The 2024 qáwmʼ planting event was last Saturday the 14th. I didn't go. Did anyone make it out to that?