Three Sisters Garden

We planted a Three Sisters Garden this year: corn, beans and squash. Corn consumes a very high quantity of nitrogen and wears out soil quickly. Without corn’s sisters, corn must be rotated every year to give soil a rest. With the sisters, corn supposedly can be planted in the same plot year after year.

We only have one place where we can plant corn. Last year we tried another plot with poor results. The only way we’ll have sweet corn yearly is if the Three Sisters do their job.

Beans pull nitrogen from the air into their roots, providing nutrition for the next year’s crop. Beans climb the cornstalks and stabilize them against wind. This is a big plus in our windy climate.

I wanted to plant purple beans this year because I find green beans on green plants somewhat hard to see. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find purple pole beans. When I typed “purple pole beans” into Google just now, several links appeared. I’ll be buying online next year!

Once my plants came up, I heavily mulched them with newspaper and grass to suppress weeds and fertilize the ground. Grass is very rich with nitrogen.

Once the corn canopies, little further tending is necessary.

Squash runs underneath the corn, providing living mulch. Shade from both corn and squash squelches weeds and preserves soil moisture. Squash vines are covered with spines, discouraging hungry creatures from eating their fruit and their sisters’ fruit. We planted butternut squash this year. I hope to make pie filling from it because I can’t stomach winter squash on its own. But butternut pie tastes better than pumpkin and I adore pumpkin pie.

Three Sisters combination produces lots of leftover plant material at end of season. Just as I do with all garden “trash”, I leave it on the ground until spring. Cornstalks and vines make wonderful snow traps.

Unfortunately, they don’t get along with our tiller. Cornstalks are too thick for it to chop and the vines get entangled in the tines. I burn them in our fire pit come spring.

When our fire pit is filled with ashes, we spread them on our garden, adding potash to the soil. Have I told you that the Frugal Gardener hates waste?

I can hardly wait for that sweet corn. Yum, yum!