Three Sisters Gardening
It's part spiritual, part gardening, part cultural, part good nutrition and part just plain common sense.
Three Sisters
The Three Sisters are 1) corn, 2) beans and 3) squash.
The corn stalks grow and support the beans who provide nitrogen into the soil for the corn while the squash provides a ground cover to preserve soil moisture for both crops and shade out germinating weeds.
I’ve experimented with three sisters gardening while on the farm and while it is superb for small scale gardens, I never really adopted its use as a general farm practice (mainly because the darn porcupines hardly let us harvest corn and I don’t like to eat squash). But it works!
Time To Plant
When it is time to plant in your garden area, work up a section of ground.
Using a hoe, create small raised circle beds (about six inches tall and twenty-four inches radius). You can easily reach into the middle of these circles if you have to do any weeding and they are not so high as to lose too much water.
The middles of all the circles in your garden should be approximately 48 to 60 inches apart. Note that these dimensions are approximate. <
What you’re really doing is creating a series of circular beds that give you space to walk between them during the summer but not so much space as to encourage weeds to grow there.
The squash will invade those walking areas! It will be quite an unruly garden area; this is not a system for the compulsively neat gardener.
Mid-circle
In the middle of the circle, plant six corn seeds (more if your circle is larger than twenty four inches) leaving approximately 8 inches between seeds.
When the corn plants are approximately six inches tall, plant an equal number of pole beans in a circle to the outside of the corn plants.
About a week after that, plant an equal number of squash seeds in another circle outside the beans.
3 Circles of Seeds
You now have three circles of seeds. They do not have to be like spokes of a wheel, they can be offset but circles within circles is the aim here.
As plants begin to grow, you may be forced to weed out all but the sturdiest of the corn plants from each mound. This is a cultural choice and a tough one. The corn should be approximately 8 to 12 inches apart and if closer, the plant will not do well. You’d be better off to weed out a few plants to give the survivors space and nutrients to do well. If your seed did not all germinate, then you may not have to weed out any plants. There are no hard and fast rules – give the corn its distance.
Leave an equal number of beans to the number of corn plants and do the same for the squash.
Beans Wind on Corn
As the beans and corn grow, make sure the beans are winding up and around the corn stalks and not lying down on top of the squash. This is as simple as putting the bean tendrils upright over a corn leaf. The bean will get the idea quite quickly.
Nutritionally Sound
It is interesting to note that while the three sisters gardening system makes sense from a cultural point of view, it also makes sense nutritionally. Corn is a good supply of carbohydrates, beans supply protein and squash is an excellent source of vitamins such as Vit A.
I want to make it quite clear that native groups see this interdependence in many other ways other than gardening. Their history, particularly the east coast tribes, is an interesting agricultural story and the three sisters gardening is rich in that heritage.
Great For Kids
If you garden with kids, the three sisters gardening system is an excellent way to teach them about gardening, ecology and the interaction with nature. Each of these plants is easy to grow, is quick to grow and easy to handle. The kids understand such things when they can work directly with the seeds and the soil.
If you use this system with kids gardening, let me suggest that you 1) plant extra. Kids love to “harvest” a little here and there and this is not only to be expected, it is to be encouraged. And the second suggestion is to plant another native staple, the sunflower in the circle as well. Kids love sunflowers and these can be harvested and either eaten or used as bird feed.
Do you have a question about Three Sisters Gardening?