jmillerfl's Blog

Three Sisters Corn, Beans and Squash
Apr 19, 2012 | 9:29 PM PST
Tags: Three Sisters , corn , beans , squash , native american

Yesterday I started clearing out the areas I wanted to try growing the Native American 3 Sisters Corn, Beans and Squash.

Today, I marked the spots for the corn mounds with . . . corn meal, asking the corn mother to bless my garden spot.

I'm not sure how successful I'll be with the corn. I'm not sure if they will get a full 6 hours of sun. The area is on the west side of the house and does get lots of sun during the day, however, I need to plant it so that I can still walk through the side yard to my sorta medicine wheel garden.

I'm not as concerned about the corn growing ears as I am that it grows the stalks for the beans. I think that will happen.

I'm mixing top soil and Black Kow to use to make the 18" wide x 4" high mounds.  I may add bone meal and blood mill and some epsom salts to the mix, though I'm not sure if I should.

I found some great instructions on how to do this here. However, due to space constrictions, I'm not going to have as much corn as they suggest.

I'm just going to plant the corn in a triangle pattern on both side of the side yard, with pole beans planted on the same mound as the corn. I'll be planting squash and cucumbers between them and on the sides. I'm not sure I'll be planting enough corn to get good pollination, but, as I said, I just need the corn stalks for the bean support.

I'm also not sure how much sprawl I'll have with the squash and cucumbers.  It is really a test.

I didn't mark the spots for the squash and cucumbers yet. Will have more photos when I get to that point. The corn needs to grow to about 4-6 inches before I plant the beans and squash.