Three Sisters Garden is Planned Out
In three of my gardens I use a Native American technique known as the three sisters. It was a form of companion gardening and crop rotation where corn, squash, and beans are planted together. The beans add nitrogen to the soil while the corn and pumpkins use nitrogen. The idea is to use pole beans which will use the corn plant as a pole, the beans can also help anchor the corn down! The pumpkins grow and their leaves form a natural mulch that both shades out weeds and the ground from the hot sun thereby helping with soil retention.
For squash I plant pumpkins, yes pumpkins are a type of squash. In my NE garden I plant popcorn, my Atlantic Giants, and this year I will be trying Navy beans. There are many different configurations for these types of gardens but I have had best luck planting my corn and beans in rows. I plant five sets of two rows that are one foot a part and then sets are then nine feet apart. In the middle of each set I have my pumpkins that are slightly staggered. The goal is to have approximately 100 square feet for each pumpkin plant. This applies when you are trying to grow large pumpkins, if you are growing your regular size pumpkins then you do not need nearly as much space. I will share configurations for my other gardens in a later article!
Finally, I put down tires and put windows on top of them as cold frames, the idea is to heat up the ground a bit more to help the pumpkins get started!
Stay tuned! Over the next couple weeks the pumpkin plants will go into the ground along with the corn and bean seeds! After that I will do some heavy duty mulching. I hate weeding but refuse to use herbicides!
Thought I would add some clarification of how I plant my corn/bean rows and the spacing for pumpkins.
Also, the pumpkins are staggered depending on the row they are in. The goal is to give each pumpkin at least 100 square feet to grow in. What is not readily apparent from my "plots" is that the gardens are larger than 40x40 but that is the "planting" area. This will allow the pumpkins to grow outside of that area and not end up completing with my lawn!
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