Three Sisters

I managed to get the rest of the vegetable garden planted over the weekend. The mornings were just perfect for planting. It was sunny and the wind was fairly brisk, keeping the mosquitoes away completely. A couple of lines from an old, quirky song come to mind, "I feel the hot wind on my shoulder and the touch of a world that is older." ('Mexican Radio', by Wall of Voodoo). I think I thought of the lyrics not only because of the welcomed anti-mosquito wind but because I was going to start with The Three Sisters, a planting method that is centuries old, when the world was younger.

I planted my Three Sisters in the main garden this year. The Three Sisters is a companion planting scheme that originates in the Native North Americans from what I understand. It's pretty ingenious, actually. Corn is planted and next to each, you plant a couple of bean or pea seeds. Corn is a heavy nitrogen user and bean/pea plants attach nitrogen to their roots. I don't know how on earth that happens, but that's what they say. So the bean/pea plants supply necessary nutrients to the corn and the corn acts as trellises for the bean/pea plants to grow on. No staking is required, gotta love that. The third sister is squash or pumpkin around the corn and peas. They act as living mulch in a way and they are supposed to keep the raccoons out. I don't have a problem with raccoons; it's the crows that drive me crazy.

I did The Three Sisters for the first time two years ago. I didn't have a lot of info, so I just went by the seat of my pants. I put the corn and snow peas together with pumpkins surrounding them. Everything did well. Pumpkins are iffy here; that year was my best crop yet. Last year, I found information about how to exactly plant The Three Sisters, complete with diagrams and exact measurements. You would have thought that I would have known better. (To see how well I do with diagrams and measurements, read about me building the chicken coop floor.) I decided to plant them in the annex. Instead of using snow peas, I used green and yellow beans. What a mess. I don't know what I did wrong but the beans just about over-ran the corn. The squash, on more than one occasion, started climbing up the corn stalks. I practically needed a machete to venture in there by mid-season. I started calling it the Green Bean Jungle. Having two major wind storms, one right after the other didn't help at all because the corn was pushed down a great deal. I did build them upright using compost but as the season continued, the beans started to over-whelm them I think. All said and done, I got a decent crop of beans and squash but the corn was a little lacking. It also took me about three times as long to harvest the crop because of the tendrils and vines everywhere. I used to tell the kids when I was going out to The Three Sisters to come search for me if I didn't return in half an hour, and to bring flashlights and flares with them.

So this year I'm going back to the seat of my pants. I'm planting snow peas not beans because they aren't so heavy or tall. I planted zucchini every now and then instead of surrounding the patch with them in the hopes I won't get a tangled mess. Just to try something new, along with planting the snow peas by the stalks of corn, I threw in a couple of radish seeds. I've heard they discourage corn and squash bugs. I don't really have a problem with the corn borer, may-be I'll find three or four in the whole crop but I thought I'd try it just to see. What's the fun in planting if you can't screw up a perfectly good system with your own ideas? The only other thing that is different is at the end of the rows, I have sunflowers instead of corn. I like sunflowers in the garden; they're big and boisterous and who knows, may-be they encourage the other plants grow big and strong just like them. A little friendly competition never hurts. Plus I ran out of corn seeds. It's done and hopefully it will do well. We'll see, but just in case I'm going to go hunt up my machete.