Three Sisters Musings

So now I’m sitting in the back of the motor home, and we’ve just passed Ottawa. This is a good time to spend reading and writing blog posts! Reading through Toby Hemenway’s “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” (what an awesome book!), I came across a discussion of the Three Sisters. Since returning to Turtle Island (aka North America), I’ve also had conversations about this guild with other gardeners. One of our friends even has a tattoo of the Three Sisters on his calf! So here are some more thoughts that came out of all this. It seems to me that the main benefit of this guild over separate patches is to the corn, which, according to one Jane Mt. Pleasant of Cornell University, yields about 20% more (measured in calories) than corn grown alone. Plus you get some squash and some beans in the deal, but I think that if you want a serious amount of beans, you need a separate bean patch (which is easy enough to do).

I’ve been puzzled by the mound pattern of planting for the corn and beans that I have seen in several instructions. They describe mounds about 20 inches across and 12 inches high, or some variation of these dimensions. I never quite understood the point, except maybe so that the ground would heat up sooner in the spring. The method described in Gaia’s Garden seems to make more sense in this respect: corn is planted 3 or 4 kernels per hole, about 3 feet apart. No thinning is done as you want 2 or 3 stalks per hole, which explains the planting distance. It’s only when the corn sprouts that you mound it, which helps warm the ground and speed up the growth of the corn. Beyond this, bean and squash planting occurs in the same way, about two weeks after the corn has sprouted. The author recommends inoculating the beans to ensure the presence of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

Another thing that could really help boost squash and bean production is adding some pollinator attractors, just like the Anasazi of the Southwest added the Rocky Mountain bee plant (Cleome serulata), thereby bringing in the experience and blessings of the insect nation. We noticed that our squashes were aborting from lack of pollination, and to be fair with the bees, who are undoubtedly doing their best as it is, the squash flowers were fairly few and far between at any given moment, and they were hidden beneath a dense canopy of leaves. In addition, pollination would require pollinators to visit a male flower first, and then a female flower, of the same squash species! So, some early blooming flowers would be a small compensation for the efforts of insect visitors.

In the future I’d try the method described in Gaia’s Garden. I think a lot of people get discouraged after trying the Three Sisters once, especially if they are used to another method that worked pretty well for them, but considering the variations in the planting instructions it is only to be expected that results will vary.