Three Sisters in Review

We're well into autumn and I thought I'd recap how the three sisters experiment went. The main garden took up all my free time so I just planted the three sisters garden and left it to struggle against the weeds and drought all by itself.

The corn on the left is Hickory King, a field corn, and the others are Country Gentleman (shoepeg) and Stowell's Evergreen, both sweet corn. The sweet corn varieties are very tall for sweet corn so I thought I'd see if they could support pole beans. I think in a good year they could, though the field corn is obviously taller and more sturdy.



My sweet corn didn't produce much due to the drought. The field corn did surprisingly well but got eaten by pack rats and chipmunks. I saw the rats in the corn stalks twice (yes, UP in the stalks, munching away!) and there are chipmunk holes all in the garden. They didn't mess with the sweet corn, I suppose because I harvested it while it was still green. They ate the heck out of the field corn though. I think if I grow field corn again I should pick it earlier and let it dry somewhere protected. Or get a Jack Russell Terrier and let him work his magic in the garden.

I didn't get a lot of beans but I got more than enough to save seed from. I did eat one mess of Ruth Bible beans and oh, my gosh! Those were the most flavorful beans I've ever had!! The Genuine Cornfield beans were easily the most productive.

Next year I will do the three sisters again but instead of mounds I'm going to do raised beds like I do in my main garden. Really just wide rows with the dirt moved out of the paths and into the plant rows. I'll plant the corn four plants wide. I'll grow bean vines on the corn stalks and grow the squash down the rows between the corn stalks. I did this in one bed in my main garden last year and it's very easy to redirect the squash into the row or bed. With the mounds, the squash were going crazy everywhere and it was impossible to walk in there during the summer.

I selected the varieties of corn and beans specifically so they would do well in this configuration. I selected corn that is tall and sturdy, and pole beans that are known to do well in a corn field, with poor lighting.

I think this would be a fantastic way to grow field corn, winter squash, and dry beans. You could wait until autumn and harvest everything right after the first frost (if you could keep the little mammal critters out of the corn that long).