How to Grow a Three Sisters Garden (2016)
nativeseeds.org
nativeseeds.org
I'm not expecting a huge yield because I planted in a small area, but I love how it's turning out!
Edit: I decided to try after reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. What a lovely book! I strongly recommend it.
12 corn stalks was NOT enough. The article hints at it near the bottom:
> Corn is wind-pollinated and while capable of self-pollinating you will have more success with more plants. It is best to have at least 10-20 corn plants to provide sufficient pollen availability but plant more if you have the space to increase your success.
I would not recommend anything less than 20 corn plants, and if you are planting somewhere with some wind protection... more still. Our first 2 years - the corn was not adequately pollinated (12 plants in year 1, and 24 in year 2).
You can still eat some of it, but an ear that's only 20% kernel and 80% empty is a bummer.
The squash and beans are still delish.
Also there are many more of these “plant guilds” and it gets more interesting for perennial plants.
I have a guild with Saturn peach, horseradish, mint, strawberries and some alliums.
More inspiration here https://permapeople.org/lists?list_type=guild
To prevent the above issues from happening, you'd have to space out corn so sparsely, that the corn crop amount you're getting will be hardly worth it, or you need to use a bigger garden area to make companion cultivation worthwhile in terms of results. And if you are using more land area, you might as well just partition out the companion plants into their own separate fields and get more yield that way, without any competition.
The corn stalks were going dry around the time the beans were popping off, and the beans were slowing down around the time the squash really wanted the light.
Admittedly - we used smaller varieties than you for the squash (heritage summer squash) so maybe the melons need more.
Our biggest issues was just that you need a LOT of corn to get the correct pollination. 10 plants absolutely did not cut it. We needed at least 30 in our space, or the ears were half empty.
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To be honest - it's probably still not as productive as partitioning each out and then carefully cultivating them. But it is super low maintenance once you get the hang of it. Nice for a family with young kids & jobs who are gardening on the side.
Recently I learned from a farmer that many popular corn varieties require exceedingly deep roots to be sturdy. More than several feet deep in many cases - depending on corn variety, soil and weather conditions, etc.
This wouldn’t be much of an issue if I planted directly in the ground, but the trouble is I don’t trust the soil or water around here quite frankly.
This year I’m building up a mound of dirt around the base of the maturing corn stalks to help support the weight of the plant. We’ll see if they stay upright through the late summer storms. Would love to hear if anyone else has successful workarounds.
That, plus lack of proper nutrients (sun, rain, minerals) led my corn to be thin and short, and they quickly topple over from the beans. You can still string them up of course, but it's annoying, and the corn ears are small and sometimes under-developed. The squash also didn't seem to fare well.
It’s similar for notill techniques — it can take five seasons before it hits a threshold and the soil becomes more productive than with conventional methods.
https://www.gardenmyths.com/three-sisters-agriculture-an-exa...
Other commenters talking about how much corn you need are correct. I have spent my time with a paintbrush or a paper bag hand-pollinating corn, and it's kind of a pain. If you prefer a more decorative version, sub in sunflowers for the corn. You can buy sunflower varieties optimized for eating and get a good snack that way.
I've run this though cronometer.com (what nutritionists use) while trying different types of beans, the following vitamins/minerals came out low:
* Zinc * Selenium * Sodium - they probably had a source of salt * VitB2 * VitB12 - this is abundant in unrefined surface water * VitK
I expected magnesium to be low, due to the omission of green leafs. But corn ( I rarely eat) turn out to be a great source, and squash is not too shabby either.
I would be hesitant with taking mineral content seriously in produce. Plants obviously don't make minerals so mineral content is mostly a factor of soil quality and characteristics. Yes different plants have different propensities to take up different minerals, but we've seen an overall decrease in mineral content across the board since at least 1940:
> All elements except P declined in concentrations between 1940 and 2019 - the greatest overall reductions during this 80-year period were Na (52%), Fe (50%), Cu (49%) and Mg (10%); water content increased (1%)
If you grow your own how many do you really need, you can pick a variety for taste instead.
But it still requires some minerals in some quantities to make a broccoli. It's true that it decreased (which is in part already factored into cronometer's data), but that's not to say that it is devoid of minerals.
Also, if not from produce, where from then? Pills? They seem to have more problems than produce (sometimes badly absorbed, Mg-searate is everywhere in pills and disputed).
If it in the worst cases reduced by 50% in produce, I will just eat double doses :)
My understanding is that nitrogen fixing plants actually require the plant to die for the nitrogen to be released. So something like clover that grows in spring and then dies in hot summer works well. But beans growing in your corn and squash at the same time don’t do this.
It you do pull up a clover you may see small nodules or balls. These contain the bacteria sites - so you can tell this way if your soil has the required bacteria - if not you can buy it in pellet for to add to the soil, or just nab some soil from another garden and put it in yours.
Try the plantings again, try more fertiliser, water and remember it takes a few years to get a great garden.
So for example, sea buckthorn will spread out roots and propogate. You’d add the nitrogen back by either severing the roots between the mother tree and its offshots, or you chop one down so that it can release those nodules back into the soil.
Yeah, no. That might be true of North America but that's definitely not the case in the rest of the Anglosphere.
In fact it probably explains the inscription on an old headstone that many considered to be a misspelling - "Gone to be an angle".
In this context I think the inscription fits perfectly for a poor soul who passed on to a better life where they expected to be able to find lots of beer after having spent their mortal life as a teetotaling Christian. If anyone asked about the spelling "error", their relatives could all claim it was misspelled while never revealing the truth that the departed really just wanted to enjoy a cold one after they had become a cold one.
I don't talk about 'the former British Empire' or 'the Commonwealth' or something when I mean the UK. (Or in the other direction, 'GB' or 'England' pointedly exclude Northern Ireland or Wales & Scotland too. The St George flag (of England) has football hooliganism associations somewhat as a consequence of that.)
The article uses Native in the sense in which you're using it, so I presume you mean that the use of the term 'native seeds' in the URL is misleading. But by long custom, "native plants" is an expression that has been used for many years, which Native peoples don't take exception to.
See for example this link to the California Native Plants Society, one of thousands like it.
https://www.cnps.org/gardening
I'd also like to point out that "native plants" and "Native peoples" are both harkening back to the same definition of "native" - as the first to be there, the original inhabitants in a sense. That is what "native seeds" is referring to, in the context of plants. There is nothing to object to here - both uses are valid.
That said, Native Seed Search is a non-profit here in AZ (Tucson, specifically) that works to maintain a seed bank for native plants from the Southwestern US:
> Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a nonprofit seed conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona. Our mission is to conserve and promote the arid-adapted crop diversity of the Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security. Native Seeds/SEARCH seeks to find, protect and preserve the seeds of the people of the Greater Southwest so that these arid adapted crops may benefit all peoples and nourish a changing world.
You’re not wrong that the domain or group name could be more specific, but at the same time the context is understood when you’re down at their brick and mortar location or buying seeds from them as myself and my family do.
I don't think that really holds true. Native is an association with a specific location, if you don't have the location in there it means basically nothing when exposed to a global audience. It's certainly true that if this was only exposed to US audiences (as it clearly is when shown in person as has been your experience) that it wouldn't be of any use to include a more specific location in there, but the web is global
If you read any of the seed descriptions you can tell that most seeds are sourced from plant varieties developed by specific tribes.
I'm not sure why they should be expected to include "American", "US", "Arizona", or "USA" in their domain name when discovering this fact is as easy as loading a web page.
Just think about all the other web sites out there with domain names that give no indication of where they might be located and the gibberish names they bought for themselves.
and who can forget "shitposting.ycombinator.com"