First of all, I've been looking at
this plan for the three sisters garden and I'd love to give it a try. The diagram there is perfect for where I plant - a 10' by 10' area, but it looks disappointing to me in that it only allows for 28 corn plants. Currently in my 10' by 10' area I have twice the number of (sweet) corn plants. And I like having a lot of sweet corn. Cut it off, blanch it & freeze it.. I end up eating it all during the following winter and wishing that I had more.
And, I HATE squash. I'm wondering if I could do the top and bottom line of mounds ALL corn/beans and do the middle one with a single pumpkin plant growing from each squash mound (2 pumpkin plants total) instead of the squash. Do you think the pumpkins would die from lack of full sun? I *could* plant the two pumpkin plants on the south end of the area and just train the vines up into and around the corn plants so at least some of the pumpkin plants would get full sun.
Maybe I should just do beans in my standard corn rows and forget the ground cover, and continue the constant weeding. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here.
Here's the diagram btw. Each corn/bean mound has 4 corn plants and 4 bean plants.
