3 Sisters Garden, 2024, Year 2

We tried for the first time last year, but we went from a cool spring to hot and dry, so what did germinate didn't last long.  We will try again, although this year got away from me so I didn't get prepped in time.

If I showed you a photo of a corn plot in February, all you'd see is white...aside from the plants left standing.

I've looked, but didn't previously get a good grasp of when to plant things - thanks for the order - plant beans when corn has sprouted, then plant squash when beans have sprouted.  We have a short enough season that I tend to do squash as starts though.  I have a source for heirloom seeds that is fairly local and I like that they have some corn and squash that were grown in the region decades ago, and some varieties are what the First Nations of the plains grew.

I remember seeing a YouTube video of a gardener absolutely dissing the three sisters concept.  The funny part is that he grew sweet corn, snap beans and summer squash, so he wanted to keep going into his garden to harvest and wound up damaging plants.  The three sisters makes more sense when we think of it as storage crops.  It also makes a lot of sense from an indigenous wisdom perspective that without refrigeration, you need crops that can be stored through the winter.

Thanks for sharing this thread.  It is inspirational to see what you are doing and experimenting with.  Hopefully I'll remember enough (or manage to come back early next year) to get my plans straight so I can try again.

Seeing your purple corn reminds me of a display I saw when we visited Peru.  Corn (maize) may have originated in Mexico, but the Inca in Peru took it to the next level from a breeding perspective.  They used purple corn to create purple dye for (mostly alpaca) wool.

I don't have space to grow as much as I would like, so I use the space I have very efficiently. I am squeezing 12 corn, 12 long bean, and 12 squash in a 5x7 area. Lots of good compost on the bed last fall, so there is good nutrition. Still feed with liquid fish fertilizers and fermented nettles and comfrey. I will have to hand pollinate, which I always have to do to get any corn. I hope this is a good year. The last two years were on less evolved soil and I had mini corn. So far I am harvesting three varieties of summer squash and there is on Kabocha on the vine. The long beans are flowering and I can see little beans starting. The corn is flowering. So far, so good.

Derek Thille wrote:We tried for the first time last year, but we went from a cool spring to hot and dry, so what did germinate didn't last long.  We will try again, although this year got away from me so I didn't get prepped in time.

If I showed you a photo of a corn plot in February, all you'd see is white...aside from the plants left standing.

I've looked, but didn't previously get a good grasp of when to plant things - thanks for the order - plant beans when corn has sprouted, then plant squash when beans have sprouted.  We have a short enough season that I tend to do squash as starts though.  I have a source for heirloom seeds that is fairly local and I like that they have some corn and squash that were grown in the region decades ago, and some varieties are what the First Nations of the plains grew.

I remember seeing a YouTube video of a gardener absolutely dissing the three sisters concept.  The funny part is that he grew sweet corn, snap beans and summer squash, so he wanted to keep going into his garden to harvest and wound up damaging plants.  The three sisters makes more sense when we think of it as storage crops.  It also makes a lot of sense from an indigenous wisdom perspective that without refrigeration, you need crops that can be stored through the winter.

Thanks for sharing this thread.  It is inspirational to see what you are doing and experimenting with.  Hopefully I'll remember enough (or manage to come back early next year) to get my plans straight so I can try again.

Seeing your purple corn reminds me of a display I saw when we visited Peru.  Corn (maize) may have originated in Mexico, but the Inca in Peru took it to the next level from a breeding perspective.  They used purple corn to create purple dye for (mostly alpaca) wool.

From my reading I was quite surprised to learn that archaeology has confirmed ancient corn growing right up into central Canada several hundred years ago. This was during an earlier warmer climate period, but during the pioneer era corn was mostly confined to the upper US states, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin due to severe cold climate. But there were, and are, varieties adapted to short,  seasons and long summer days. Fortunately we are back into a warmish era, so once again corn can be grown in central Canada.

As for 3-Sisters, it's not magic (unlike some writers promoting it would like you to think). It has drawbacks, one of which is that with the ground covered in bean and squash vines it can get hard to walk! I just take it as an opportunity to practice my balance, and some jumping and stretching exercise. For me, with a large garden, stepping on the occasional vine isn't a great problem though, there are enough plants growing that they fill right in if I kill one. And I move vines to make walkways.

A second drawback is lower production of squash and beans, and the corn too if it is widely planted.

I read a lot of archeology and anthropology research papers on the topic of indigenous agriculture. One thing they argue about constantly was how productive ancient ag was. How many bushels of corn/acre, beans, pounds of squash. I suspect they may be missing an important point.

They seem to be assuming the ancient Indians were constantly desperate and near starvation, and trying to squeeze every possible calorie out of their fields. But what original sources we have tell me this wasn't true. Many sources say outright that the Native Americans had fairly leisurely lives compared to the colonial peoples, and source after source commented that they were taller and more robust than the colonists, suggesting a better diet. Farming was a social activity with year-round gatherings and festivals. They farmed  in ways that reduced work effort.

I am keeping a diary of every minute in the garden this year. What I do and how much time it takes, and whether my work effort was low, medium, or high. I am a 60+ year old man, somewhat out of shape. So far I have yet to have a day that I considered high effort. So far this year, 8 days I rated as moderate, all the others as low effort. The hardest day was the day I made 16 new corn hills. But in the old days, new hills were only built every decade or more, when they opened new land. And building new hills is generally a slow, season-long process, not a major one-time effort.

So 3-sisters is really a very low-work style garden. I have no power tools, only hoes and a spade. The early spring work is more effort than the ancients would have made it, since I can't burn off the garden and have to clear the surface by hand with a hoe. But I do it a few rows at a time between the thaw and planting time, so it isn't really hard work.

Marco Zolow wrote:I don't have space to grow as much as I would like, so I use the space I have very efficiently. I am squeezing 12 corn, 12 long bean, and 12 squash in a 5x7 area. Lots of good compost on the bed last fall, so there is good nutrition. Still feed with liquid fish fertilizers and fermented nettles and comfrey. I will have to hand pollinate, which I always have to do to get any corn. I hope this is a good year. The last two years were on less evolved soil and I had mini corn. So far I am harvesting three varieties of summer squash and there is on Kabocha on the vine. The long beans are flowering and I can see little beans starting. The corn is flowering. So far, so good.

That's beautiful!
Surprised you have to hand-pollinate.

My backyard garden, not nearly as pretty as yours:

Honey bees gather corn pollen.

Purple tassels:

Color looks good. This patch got NPK and gypsum a year ago in the spring, nothing since. I hope to see how well it can maintain fertility with just companion crops filling all the gaps between corn. A few of the corn hills have poor color, not deep green, or striped leaves, and short stalks. Not a lot, and not too badly, but those hills obviously are lower nutrients.

Starting to get some white and red clover patches growing between the corn hills. Avoiding hoeing those up. Plan to add birdsfoot trefoil as well.

As our corn dried up it exposed the few southern peas surviving and some sweet potato vines.  I decided to plant more sweets since they had made it that far and watered each transplant once.
THEN...we got 3.5" of rain this week and the corn has rehydrated and competely shaded the sweet potatoes and beans.
The squash is long gone to squash bugs.
I'm adding a pic of the dry corn stalks for contrast...I did not know corn did this...will it still tassel?

corn june 29

Judith Browning wrote:As our corn dried up it exposed the few southern peas surviving and somebsweet potato vines.  I decided to plant more sweets since they had made it that far and watered each transplant once.
THEN...we got 3.5" of rain this week and the corn has rehydrated and competely shaded the sweet potatoes and beans.
The squash is long gone to squash bugs.
I'm adding a pic of the dry corn stalks for contrast...I did not know corn did this...will it still tassel?

It should still tassel.
I am also fighting squash bugs. Lots of them this year. Rubbing off the eggs, and squashing the adults.

  It should still tassel.
I am also fighting squash bugs. Lots of them this year. Rubbing off the eggs, and squashing the adults.

Thom, We had not tried to grow winter squash for a few years so I thought I could try again...squash bugs were early and prolific and I didn't even try to keep up.  
Have focused on sweet potatoes for our winter storage orange vegetable for awhile and the last few years have been growing a deep purple one that is more drought tolerant.  Hoping they play well with the corn although I might have to thin some corn stalks if they shade them too much.

Back to hot humid summer here soon with no more rain in site.

I just wanted to drop a note to say I really enjoyed reading this and last year's thread.  I am having the best gardening year of my life but I didnt plant corn.  I have a nice big area I want to expand my garden into and will make mounds this fall in prep for the spring .  I really like that idea it front loads work from when I am overwhelmed in the garden  to a time where there is nt much going on.

Thom Bri wrote:

That's beautiful!
Surprised you have to hand-pollinate.

Thanks! Beauty is intrinsic to anything that we grow. We are all fortunate to have the gardening experience.

I tried something different to help with pollination this year. Since there are only two rows, and the wind can be fickle, I decided to shake the stalks during the calmest part of the day and let the pollen float down and across. Encouraging cross pollination! Some of the ears are starting to get a little bit of size, so I am hopeful. You should have seen the mini ears that I grew before.

Jeff Marchand wrote:I have a nice big area I want to expand my garden into and will make mounds this fall in prep for the spring .  I really like that idea it front loads work from when I am overwhelmed in the garden  to a time where there is nt much going on.

Thanks. It's fun.

Making the mounds on already-tilled land is easy. This season I made about 30 new mounds on grass sod. That was hard work. And, lots of weeds and the grass wants to take over again. I can easily understand the attraction of moldboard plows after doing this. Or burning the surface. But, next year should be a lot easier. It's a one-time effort, and only maintenance after that.

The first year you don't even need to make mounds. You plant the seed in the flat ground, and build up the mounds gradually over the season as you weed, scraping the weeds and soil inwards towards the corn. I made the 30 new mounds because I needed to flip the sod over to start killing the grass.

I found the seed packet and the variety I am growing is heirloom 8-row golden bantam 75 day sweet corn.  Since I planted corns in mid June, the grow degree unit has been steadily accumulating at 25-30 units/day, thanks to a mild and wet summer. It certainly makes the corns grow like a clock and I am expecting tasseling in 10 days or so.
Here are what they look now in my very chaotic polyculture garden.

May Lotito wrote:I found the seed packet and the variety I am growing is heirloom 8-row golden bantam 75 day sweet corn.  Since I planted corns in mid June, the grow degree unit has been steadily accumulating at 25-30 units/day, thanks to a mild and wet summer. It certainly makes the corns grow like a clock and I am expecting tasseling in 10 days or so.
Here are what they look now in my very chaotic polyculture garden.

Love that pic, it's like one of those 'how many 'X' do you see in this picture' games. Took me a minute before I noticed the chicken.

Great pic of tillering corn, but some idiot got a finger in the way.

Tomatoes, potatoes, squash, corn, beans.

Beans climbing corn.

1 1/2 inches of rain and strong winds overnight. About 10% lodging. A few snapped off, most just laid over. I am expecting most of the stalks leaning over to right themselves in a few days.

I just read about seed companies are breeding shorter corns to withstand windstorm better.
https://www.startribune.com/short-stature-corn-big-change-farming/600380475/

May Lotito wrote:I just read about seed companies are breeding shorter corns to withstand windstorm better.
https://www.startribune.com/short-stature-corn-big-change-farming/600380475/

Yeah, it's been a big push the last couple of years. With short stature and stiff stalk they are hoping for a much more resistant plant. My corn grows next to a big cornfield, so whatever they plant I end up with in a few years, so I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing short, thick plants.

Great series! I failed a couple years back. I'm more into landracing now. Hoping to get some super vigorous beans that will climb the stalks in my not supersunny climate.
Somebody on Permies had bred squashbug resistant squash over an x years period. That would be interesting to add to these gardens of yours.

Hugo Morvan wrote:Great series! I failed a couple years back. I'm more into landracing now. Hoping to get some super vigorous beans that will climb the stalks in my not supersunny climate.
Somebody on Permies had bred squashbug resistant squash over an x years period. That would be interesting to add to these gardens of yours.

This is a landrace in the making. I don't consider it a true landrace until it has a more-stable phenotype. It has been crossed with many different types of corn, and been grown on 2 different continents, and my selection goals have changed. Without a doubt it has weird genetics mixed in from the standard hybrid corn that grows nearby most years, so almost certainly some GMO stuff in there. I deliberately added a glass gem a few years ago to add some new genetics, more flinty. That genetics is clearly not totally mixed in yet; I can still pick it out just by looking at the stalks.

This spring I selected more strongly for a particular appearance, and selected strongly away from the hybrid dent corn appearance. That doesn't remove the genes, since by now it is all mixed it. But it is easy to spot. The hybrid corn has red cobs, yellow kernels, green plants with very upright, upwards-pointing leaves, and white tassels. That combination is a sure sign of the hybrid crosses.

The squash I grow is a particular variety my wife prefers, so I am kind of stuck there. I doubt I can make any progress towards squash bug resistance in a maxima variety with only a few plants to select from.

The beans are a random assortment of whatever I picked up over the years. It's a pretty good mix by now.

That rain last week did the trick...

Tasselling and even a few silks!

Aiai, that would upset me GMO in my corn. This is the thread on squash bug resistant squash a member of Permies bred over the years. Has someone got the seeds?
https://permies.com/t/57948/thought-permaculture-insect-control-failed

I am interested in growing dark color corns for craft projects so I ordered Martian Jewels and mountain morado from bakercreek today. Martian Jewels DTM is 80 -90 days butI can't find info on mountain morado. It could be 90-110 days. I am going to grow some this year, hopefully I will beat the first frost to get some harvest. If the two DTMs are 20 days apart, will they still cross pollinate?

Hugo Morvan wrote:Aiai, that would upset me GMO in my corn. This is the thread.
https://permies.com/t/57948/thought-permaculture-insect-control-failed

Permies is not the place to have a deep discussion of GMOs. Suffice to say they don't much bother me.

May Lotito wrote:I am interested in growing dark color corns for craft projects so I ordered Martian Jewels and mountain morado from bakercreek today. Martian Jewels DTM is 80 -90 days butI can't find info on mountain morado. It could be 90-110 days. I am going to grow some this year, hopefully I will beat the first frost to get some harvest. If the two DTMs are 20 days apart, will they still cross pollinate?

They may at the edges, last of one and earliest of the other.

I dont know if its been said but  squash take up alot of space in the garden, if you are not going do a 3 sisters garden where are you planting your squashes and pumpkins? I did nt a 3 sisters garden this year and mistake #1 was planting my squashes by my leeks and onions. They are shading out the aliums.  Garlic would have made a better choice as  they would be out of the garden by now.  Mistake #2 was to plant pumpkins off on their own with plenty of space which then filled with weeds that I have to clean out with not much payback for the effort.

Jeff Marchand wrote:I dont know if its been said but  squash take up alot of space in the garden, if you are not going do a 3 sisters garden where are you planting your squashes and pumpkins? I did nt a 3 sisters garden this year and mistake #1 was planting my squashes by my leeks and onions. They are shading out the aliums.  Garlic would have made a better choice as  they would be out of the garden by now.  Mistake #2 was to plant pumpkins off on their own with plenty of space which then filled with weeds that I have to clean out with not much payback for the effort.

The squash go in between the corn hills. Anywhere there is a couple of feet with no corn. Shade reduces squash harvest, so you end up with a lot less squash than you would with just a monocrop squash field. But you get some, and it doesn't hurt the corn harvest, so it's all plus. I think longer term, you have more ground cover and more organic matter, so less erosion and more carbon added to the soil.

The squash will definitely smother shorter plants.  I plant tomatoes and beans alongside the squash and it all forms a huge mess of competing viney plants. They all produce less individually than would the separate monocrops. The ground under the mess is always cool and moist so I think there is some advantage. If you are the kind of gardener who likes nice, neat rows, and easy harvesting, this will drive you crazy. Or if it was a business that needed to make money for you, it's too annoying to try to pick a little here and a little there. Wouldn't work.

So 3-sisters, at least the way I do it, has some definite downsides. I like it because it is super-easy, low work that I can fiddle with for an hour after work and feel refreshed, not more tired.

Generally the squash near the edges send runners out into the grass and make more squash there than actually in the cornfield. They grow very well extending out into both rough grass and into the lawn. Get lots of squash from my lawn. Just mow around the vines as they extend longer and longer. Looks weird, and I imagine my neat-freak neighbor with the chem-lawn hates seeing it. A push lawnmower might solve some of your weed problems between the vines, if they are not too long and tangled together yet.

One big upside is the multiple crops allow one crop to fail but the garden still produces a lot of something else. I am dealing with that now, and have some pics to upload tonight.

Huge windstorm and tornadoes in N Illinois last night. Took a lot of corn right down. Talking with the farmer who works our land, he says my corn looks just like his sweet corn. I saw a lot of the hybrid corn laid down as I drove past going to my garden, but the hybrid corn 60 feet (20 meters) from my garden doesn't look too bad. They have invested a lot of time and thought into root strength and stalk strength in the hybrid breeding programs, and it shows obviously in the side-by-side comparison.

I am still hoping for a decent production. I think a lot of the corn will stand back up, and I can help it with shovels of dirt at the bases. But it won't be the year I was hoping for. The broken main stalks are unsalvageable, but the tillers will overcompensate for some of that. I guess my main selection this year will be for stalk strength, lodging resistance, whether I like it or not

Before and after, July 10th, and July 16th same spot.

Sorry to hear your corns got hit by winds again. Hopefully the lodged ones will recover. How about the snapped ones? Will the ears continue to develop?

The comparison to the corn field in the background is intriguing. I am wondering if the root lodging has to do with planting in the hills. If the hill is high in organic matters, are you still able to plant seeds 2 inches deep in mineral soil? Or they are actually growing above ground level? If so, over the growing season as the organic matters decompose, the roots will have less contact with the media to hold strongly. Also, more nutritious soil makes your corns taller and more susceptible to high winds than those in the regular farm.

May Lotito wrote:Sorry to hear your corns got hit by winds again. Hopefully the lodged ones will recover. How about the snapped ones? Will the ears continue to develop?

The comparison to the corn field in the background is intriguing. I am wondering if the root lodging has to do with planting in the hills. If the hill is high in organic matters, are you still able to plant seeds 2 inches deep in mineral soil? Or they are actually growing above ground level? If so, over the growing season as the organic matters decompose, the roots will have less contact with the media to hold strongly. Also, more nutritious soil makes your corns taller and more susceptible to high winds than those in the regular farm.

The ones literally snapped will not produce, but the ones that leaned over at the root level probably will. Most of the damage is to the tillers, but quite a few main stalks also got pushed over or broken.

I strongly suspect you are right about the hills adding to the lodging. The soil in the hills is softer, and it was already water saturated when the wind hit. Since the hills are permanent, I did not mound up dirt around the base of the stalk as much this year.

Another factor is the planting distance. The hybrid corn is planted very closely together, so each stalk is supported on all 4 sides by other stalks. It is selected for genetics to tolerate that close planting.

Every factor has plusses and minuses. My wide planting is very advantageous for weeding and for growing the companion crops. The hills aid early planting, and later weeding, and simply ease of working in the garden. In dry years the hills help retain moisture as shown by last year's production during a severe drought.

I am disappointed that the corn was injured after what looked to be a perfect growing year. But really not that unhappy. Every year has something go wrong. I'll still get all the corn I can eat out of it, and the companion crops should do a lot better with all the extra sunlight they will be getting. So I may end up with a severe excess of beans and squash out of this. It's all fun. I figured it's important to show the failures and not just the pretty pictures of a success.

rising up

Some good ears

I am testing if I can convert a piece of lawn quickly for growing corn and restore it after the corns are harvested.

I wanted to grow more corns but it was kind of late for the season, besides, I didn't have any garden space available. I decided to solarize an area in the middle of my back yard and use it for growing. At the same time, I bagged up grass clippings to make hot compost for nitrogen rich fertilizer since corn are heavy feeders. Here is the progress so far:

July 15th: seeds ordered, lawn solarized for the next 4 days, grass clippings sun dried
July 16th: hot composting, temperature at 150 F/65C for the next 3 days, turned daily
July 17th: seeds received. Soaked in water overnight then wrapped in moist paper towel
July 19th: radical root tips visible. Planted at 1.5 inches deep in a grid of 1ft x 1. 5 ft
July 22nd: emergence

I plan on top dressing with compost every week for fertility. Some of the original clover might not be killed all the way down to the roots. If they don't come back, I will sow some clover seeds when the corn seedlings are bigger.

ETA on July 29th: V3 stage
ETA on Aug 4th: thin to 25 plants. V5 and tillering

May Lotito wrote:I am testing if I can convert a piece of lawn quickly for growing corn and restore it after the corns are harvested.

I wanted to grow more corns but it was kind of late for the season, besides, I didn't have any garden space available. I decided to solarize an area in the middle of my back yard and use it for growing. At the same time, I bagged up grass clippings to make hot compost for nitrogen rich fertilizer since corn are heavy feeders. Here is the progress so far:

Nice! I guess it depends on what kind of soil is under the sod. At my house the topsoil was stripped off so it's all really hard, poor clay. Lawn grass grows very poorly, only clover and dandelion looks healthy. I doubt I could grow corn in it without a huge investment in compost.

I suppose you can get sweet corn still, but I doubt it can mature this late. Fun to try it though.

Ground cover veggies starting to look good. Squash, cantaloupe, beans and tomatoes all extending nicely. In a few weeks it will be hard to walk around. The goal is complete cover of the surface. Lots of squash bugs destroyed today.

William Bronson wrote: We think of the three as long season plants left to produce storage crops.

A friend was recently reading a book and it suggested that this was the traditional use of the 3-sister's garden. It's too chaotic to be going in to harvest on a daily or weekly basis which I do if I'm harvesting green beans. If I want dried beans, they get left alone until fall.

I am not convinced this is a system that would have been used in my ecosystem, and the few times I've tried, the plants struggled probably due to our cool nights and summer droughts.

But I admire all the awesome permies that are making this work and learning in the meantime.

Remember that field fertility or lack there of, wouldn't have been the only reason for Indigenous people to have moved on to new ground. They may have hunted out an area, used all the easy firewood, or created too much of a poop pile. There are many good reasons for short-term settlement and many benefits of a semi-nomadic lifestyle particularly in some ecosystems.  

Jay Angler wrote:
I am not convinced this is a system that would have been used in my ecosystem, and the few times I've tried, the plants struggled probably due to our cool nights and summer droughts.

But I admire all the awesome permies that are making this work and learning in the meantime.

Remember that field fertility or lack there of, wouldn't have been the only reason for Indigenous people to have moved on to new ground. They may have hunted out an area, used all the easy firewood, or created too much of a poop pile. There are many good reasons for short-term settlement and many benefits of a semi-nomadic lifestyle particularly in some ecosystems.  

I am pretty sure that all 3 sisters were not planted together all the time. For one thing, it's harder to weed and harvest. For another, beans and squash have a lot lower productivity grown together with corn. So if you really wanted lots of squash, you'd plant them separately.

I worked a couple years in the hill country of Guatemala. Most people had milpas. Beans were usually grown separately. Sometimes they would plant a small variety of corn and use that for the vines to grow up on, but I only saw that once. Squash were not 'cultivated'. The farmers basically just whacked open a few squash they had handy and kicked them around a bit in the cornfields. Anything that grew was extra; they made no other special effort to grow squash. Most cornfields I saw were just corn. Unfortunately at that time I wasn't that interested in the milpas, so didn't make any careful observations. I do know that different villages had very different methods.

As for 'semi-nomadic', it's up for debate. Some claim every 10 years or less for village removal, other 40+ years. I suspect lack of nearby wood was a major factor, and maybe game scarcity.