Three Sisters Garden year 3, 2025

Started work on the 3 sisters garden last week. Nothing more than digging up a few clumps of aggressive grass and laying out straw along the edges to hold the grass back.
This is year 3. Year one I used gypsum and some NPK fertilizer. Year two nothing like that, so this will be the second year of only organic amendments.
2024: https://permies.com/t/249459/Sisters-Garden-Year
2023: https://permies.com/t/233039/Fall-prep-spring-sisters-garden
The garden now:

I hope to post regularly on this thread, anything about 3 sisters, milpa, or corn and related topics. I'd love to see pics and posts about any related topics. If you are growing corn discuss methods and techniques.

I'll be keeping an eye on this post, I really like the 3 sisters concept and ancient methods of growing. Best of luck in year 3!

My MIL is finally doing 3 sisters this year!  In her neighbour's yard so they can learn together.

So far have put in an hour and 45 minutes working in the garden, and haven't planted anything yet. Mostly digging up clumps of grass. Today I cleared and leveled 2 rows of hills, getting them ready for planting in a few weeks.

I am lowering the hills a bit compared to last year. I had a problem last summer with some wind storms that lodged my corn, quite a lot was flat on the ground or nearly so. So I decided to reduce the hills a bit and later mound the dirt back up as the corn grows this year. Besides, there are a lot of weeds growing and I want to clear them off before planting.

So little by little over the next few weeks I will be hoeing and leveling the hills. It's 3000 square feet (279 square meters) so too much to do all at once by hand. No power tools or tractors, all hoe and spade.

I have a sack full of sprouting potatoes I saved from last year. Those will get planted later this week or next week. Corn I am aiming for first week of May, but any time for the next month is fine. Beans will get planted when the corn is sprouted, and squash when the beans are sprouted. Other stuff will get planted whenever I get around to planting it.

Trying to post a few pics, sadly my upload speed is too slow right now.

A newly leveled hill

Hill before leveling

Row of leveled hills

Last year I already had my corn planted by now. I track the flowering dates of local trees and last year bloom was 2 weeks earlier than the average. This year is right on the average for blooming.

Getting anxious to plant things. Off work tomorrow and if the weather is decent may put my potatoes in. Still a bit chilly for corn planting this year. Already picking rocket and asparagus, and will have lettuce in a few days. Good rain last night. Time to get the rain gauge set up.

Potatoes go between the corn hills, so roughly 2-3 feet (about 1 meter or a bit less) from a corn plant to a potato plant. This has been sufficient in the past for good results for both corn and potatoes.

Interesting combination of potatoes and corn, I would have thought the potatoes would be ready to harvest some time before the corn? And the distance between the corn and the potatoes too small to avoid disturbing the corn roots while harvesting potatoes? 1 m is seems a good distance, but two feet I would be nervous. How do you get this to work?

Keep it up. I just started mine. Put in corn, got rain coming. Thank goodness. I planted sunflower to the north to windbreak the corn and give some back to the birds. Going with beans and peas, then squash and melons. First time trying it. Haha.

It's very low maintenance of you get the timing right. I hear they use to bury a fish deep under before planting the corn, but any amendment would do I guess.

I been getting into more living trellis. Sunflower when they get past 6in they start flying. You can cut the bottom leaves back to give the ground some light for vines to start climbing up, or start them and transplant. I'm probably try that next year. Maybe sunflower with tomatoes and clover, or a ground runner nitrogen fixer. Instead of the beans vining the tomatoes are.

Three sisters is underrated. Thanks for your wisdom.

E Nordlie wrote:Interesting combination of potatoes and corn, I would have thought the potatoes would be ready to harvest some time before the corn? And the distance between the corn and the potatoes too small to avoid disturbing the corn roots while harvesting potatoes? 1 m is seems a good distance, but two feet I would be nervous. How do you get this to work?

If the goal is max production of one crop, mono-culture has proved superior. So you are right. But I don't worry about the little loss of one crop or another since I want the variety. I plant a huge messy mix of different things and let them fight it out. Beans, peas, corn, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, cantaloupes, sunflowers, tobacco, onions, watermelon were all in the garden mixed together last year.

For unknown reasons each year something will produce much better than usual, and something else much worse. It averages out. Last year squash and cantaloupes did poorly, and watermelon completely failed. Corn and beans did well and potatoes fairly well. Two years ago squash and cantaloupes did quite well but watermelon failed. I speculated last year that nighttime temps were too low for the vine crops, and the bugs vary a lot from year to year too.

By later summer the ground is covered with a big mix of vines so it gets hard to walk. Picking tomatoes can be a real challenge.

Rad Anthony wrote:
I been getting into more living trellis. Sunflower when they get past 6in they start flying. You can cut the bottom leaves back to give the ground some light for vines to start climbing up, or start them and transplant. .

I find sunflowers work really well with climbing beans. The beans really seem to love sunflowers. Squash will climb sunflowers too but can get too heavy and pull them down. I also take the bottom sunflower leaves off if something at ground level needs more light.

Ok thanks. You think peas would work?

Rad Anthony wrote:Ok thanks. You think peas would work?

Think so.

Planted potatoes today, 23.

Some plants in the garden. Most of this won't get weeded much. Either they die off soon, or they are low-lying plants that won't compete for sunlight. It will be interesting to see how well the stuff I plant does with the competition. ANything that gets too tall will be cut back.

Another hour today scraping the tops of the hills, prepping for planting. This is as much tillage as this garden has gotten in 10 years. Just clear a spot to put the corn seeds and leave the rest. I did 32 hills yesterday and 52 today. Less than half done but at this rate only a couple more hours then the corn goes in. It's May. Time to plant corn!

My muscles ache a bit, a busy few days. Also dug up and separated daffodil bulbs today. Shared about half with a friend and planted my half, maybe 50 bulbs.

Hour and 30 minutes today. Finished leveling and clearing the last few hills, ready to plant corn tomorrow. Also got excited and precipitously planted 34 hills of kabocha squash and mixed beans. Early, but we will see. I plan to wait a few weeks before planting the rest of the beans and squash. Goal is to have the whole garden completely covered in squash, bean, tomato and cantaloupe vines.

Unrelated, but split a hive of bees today too.

Weird, I lost my saved kabocha seeds from 2023 and 2024. I KNOW I saved lots, several containers, but have no idea where I put them. So the seeds I planted were from 2022. Hope they are still Okay. I went through all my saved seeds and found loads of stuff I hardly want more of, like zucchini and okra, way more than I need, but where are the kabocha? Tomorrow to dig through the basement and garage and see if I didn't put them away somewhere.

Plan for tonight is to get my corn seed out, see what survived the weevils, and put it to soak and plant tomorrow. One night of frost in the forecast later this week, but warmer the rest of the days.

Surprised, the corn seed looks good. Not much weevil damage, and I only found a few, puny-looking weevils. Not enough even for a good pic.

Reminds me of the time my red Russian kale seeds, seedsaved by one of my best friends, escaped from my seedbox never to be seen again,  I was disappointed.

Riona Abhainn wrote:Reminds me of the time my red Russian kale seeds, seedsaved by one of my best friends, escaped from my seedbox never to be seen again,  I was disappointed.

I am thinking now that I put them in old seed containers and didn't relabel them. So it's quite possible my '2022' Kabocha is actually 2024. Regardless, that's what's going to get planted.

Long day, 3 hours planting. Got all the corn in, about 200 hills. Tired.

Planted in hills 4-6 feet apart. In general each hill has 5 seeds, but a couple rows I put in several seeds per spot so they could have 10 or more seeds in one hill. Goal is to end up with 3 or 4 plants per hill. Any sad-looking plants will get yanked out. Hills are about 2 feet across and slightly elevated.

Last year I put in 7 seeds per hill in a circular pattern 5 around the outside, with 2 in the middle. This didn't work out well. The plants on the inside were puny and didn't produce good ears. Too much competition I think. So this year I left out the inner seeds. I will try putting a bean seed there instead.

Neighbor friend who keeps cows. I asked him if he had any old, rotten haybales he couldn't feed to the animals. He said he might. These showed up yesterday!

Hawthorn, just because:

Could have included a bucket. These are the tools I use. Not much else. The digging/planting stick has an old lawn mower blade on one end.

By the way I do NOT advise getting that design of heavy hoe. Poor ergonomics! The straight handle and 90 degree angle of handle to blade is not optimal, and it will be very difficult to separate handle and hoe-blade to put on a new handle.

Sweet corn planted today in 4 rows. Also a few beans. Hope is to plant twice more and have a long season. Last year the last I planted was too late and hardly got any ears. I also put too many seeds in each bunch which cost me a lot of good ears. Seed is saved from 2023 and 2024, all mixed together.

Home garden is doing well. Eating lettuce, asparagus, rocket, chives. Growing is shiso, peas, sweet corn, onions are up from seed, zucchini, beans. Lots of flowers this year, strawberries are blooming and peaches done blooming. Seeds started in egg cartons are bell peppers (seeds from the supermarket fruit), bitter melon (no signs of sprouting), parsley, okra. Also sprouting cotton, just for fun.

Sounds like things are coming along well.  We'll see if your corn is knee-high-4th-of-July, )

Riona Abhainn wrote:Sounds like things are coming along well.  We'll see if your corn is knee-high-4th-of-July, )

Darn well better be! Head high or more!

May 2nd planted potatoes. So far no growth visible.
May 7th planted squash. A few plants showing above ground.
May 8th planted all the corn and some beans. About 50% of the corn is sprouted, and a few beans.

There has been no rain since anything was planted. I didn't even bother to put out the rain gauge until this morning since there was a chance of rain today. Weather report is more hopeful for next week. But temps have been quite warm, and there is just enough soil moisture to let things get started.

Once the crops are a few inches tall I will start spreading the hay on the hills and between the hills. Plan for tomorrow is to plant a lot of mixed beans and a few more squash. Maybe also a few cantaloupe and watermelon. No hurry on any of these. Around here we can plant into June and still usually do well. Last year everything got planted very early, and I think that really hurt the warm-loving plants like squash, cantaloupe and watermelon. Planning to plant in waves this year, a few every week until the garden is full. Hopefully that will allow more variability and resistance to unpredictable weather.

My suspicion is that this year will be like 2023 was, with a very warm and dry spring. Early planting is better in that case. In a wetter year holding off and planting later takes advantage of the greater warmth. I will split the difference this year and spread out planting.
Pics show: corn and bean, squash, messy weedy garden:

We plant potatoes in early March in my knick of the woods, I think early May would be too warm here for that to be successful, just goes to show how zones are all different.

Riona Abhainn wrote:We plant potatoes in early March in my knick of the woods, I think early May would be too warm here for that to be successful, just goes to show how zones are all different.

I don't usually get around to digging them until fall. Just leave them in the ground until I want them. End up with a lot of green ones, but those just go in a paper bag in the basement and get planted the next spring.

Too dry to dig so didn't get much planted today. Some beans and soy and a handful of squash. Weather report says no rain until Tuesday. It's so dry the lawn is turning brown again!

Saw some potatoes sprouting today. Happy.

Pic of home garden. Everything except the corn and beans was broadcast. Way overcrowded, it's a fight to see which plant wins. How many plants can you identify?

At last! Rain last night and today, a good amount. And forecast is for several more days of rain. Will wait until the end of the week at least to plant more, weather is expected to be quite chilly. Pointless to plant warm weather seeds with temps in the 40s at night.

I only recognized lettuce, zucchini, corn, dandelion and sunflower. What else are there?

May Lotito wrote:I only recognized lettuce, zucchini, corn, dandelion and sunflower. What else are there?

Quite a few. I think I need to take better pics!