Milpa--three sisters with a variation, and study with indigenous Mexican farmers

This article is pretty informative, hoping she'll also post some more details there or here:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/four-ways-mexico-indigenous-farmers-agriculture-of-the-future-20150810

Leah Penniment of Soul Fire Farm went to Mexico this winter and studied with a lot of different farmers up in the poor-soil, steep slope areas. Milpa, or three-sisters-type thing, is one of their practices, but I remember her telling me that it had five seeds (peppers were involved too) and also that it all gets planted in a single hole instead of just nearby.

Other lessons to be learned from this environment.

It's great yhow they're rebuilding the oil and re-implementing ancestral knowledge.

One thing of note to me about the three sisters planting is that a photo in the article shows that the corn plants were spaced widely apart... Like 10 feet between plants.

Good point, hadnt really looked at the photo!

Also they talk about eating insects for protein, and processing corn with lime, in a way that maximizes bioavailability of nutrient and allows for a complete protein (with bean).

https://permies.com/forums/posts/watch/0/16143

ok, found a related thread (search engine, foiled again! I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you crappy search engines!)

This thread says that there was a fourth sister of a pollinator, may have been a weed/volunteer but was useful in the context.

yay! I have 300 posts! OK, now it's 301