I've tried the 3 sisters a couple times with less than perfect results. It seems one of the 3 sisters dominated. I'm thinking better results could be achieved with different varieties and better timing.

Next time I'm thinking of getting the corn up to at least 6 inches before the beans or squash are planted.

Then again I might mix melons in instead of squash or try some version of 6 sisters.

Gjcore, that was my 1st idea from having tried 3 sisters gardening -- plant the corn 1st, other things later. And, I could do that with the pole beans. David encouraged me to plant pole beans in July. They had a brief but lively 2010 season.

However, only summer squash could be planted around the 1st of July with an expected harvest and any shading might interfere with that. A vining winter squash would not mature fruit. And, I would never be able to enjoy a ripe melon if I waited even 2 weeks into June to plant.

Giving all the plants a great deal of room, choosing a very vigorous variety of corn, taking up arms against freezing trouble, smoke and mirrors . . . I can't think of any other good ways of fitting the 3 sisters together in my neck of the woods. The idea of staggered plantings only seems to boggle what's left of my mind!

Steve

Did your pole beans make, Steve? I had the best crop I've ever had - late frost, but I picked bushels.

With the 3 sis' garden, I'd always envisioned it more as a 'harvest the whole thing' deal. Plant corn, plant bean along side for nitrogen, and plant a few winter squash here and there, and then when the Harvest Moon is high, and the geese honking their way south, go pick it all.

But I've never done it....:-)

They were great, David, but the first frost held off unusually long.

The pole beans did fine! But, now that I think on it, if I was trying to grow them for dry beans, they would have been something of a bust. They fairly much came all at once over about 10 days and then frost put a stop to things. Still, I sowed that seed really late.

You know, pole beans are so high that even a light frost burns them severely.

Steve

I've been google searching for images of 3 Sisters gardens. There's not much I can see that looks to me like it's just right which is a bit disappointing. This is what looked best to me - http://www.seedweneed.com/images/11.gif

Corn really seems to me to be the most important thing to establish. Corn needs to be planted in blocks preferably at least 12 x 12 plants. And they'll need to be spaced further apart than normal compared to if one was just growing corn. Since they're placed further apart the corn block might need to be bigger maybe 16 x 16 plants. Which is good amount of corn and space.

Wonderful, Gjcore! The Seed We Need website is the "official site for Dave Christensen's Painted Mountain flour corn."

That is a corn variety I have grown and have been thinking about, relative to this sisters garden! The plants in the picture have just started tasseling. They will make it a bit taller but they are already at about 10'.

The beans in front of the corn are bush beans but it gives you an idea of the vigor of this corn variety. There must be others like this one but it looks to me as tho' that summer, it could hold its own with most any vines. {{gwi:1188676}}From digitS'

One tad bit more information about that Painted Mountain corn:

The photograph was taken July 26th.

It's got another 6 weeks of the growing season, at least, but there are the tassels, there is the silk . . .

Good stuff.

S'

A few days ago:

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You can see a Buttercup squash plant there in the upper corner. I have them planted along the south side and pumpkins on the west side of this little "Sisters Corner."

Today, I will plant pole beans along this south row of the Painted Mountain corn.

Here is what I'm hoping for, again:

But, it is slow start in this very cool spring of 2011!

Steve

I read something about this recently, where the theory was to plant the corn in clumps, with the beans going up the clumps, the squash in-between the clumps. I have a neighbor who is trying this approach.

I am always amazed at your "soil", Steve. That looks like my driveway.

Here are the sisters at the moment:

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I kind of screwed up . . . like, not reading the descriptions of the current Painted Mountain corn being sold by a number of catalog companies. Fedco says it is a 5 foot corn . . . !!

I can only guess that the Painted Mountain seed I bought not 5 years ago was a different gene pool. The breeder says that development is an ongoing thing. He also talks about more than one line, on his website.

So, when it began to tassel . . . there I am out there with a sledge hammer and a crate to stand on -- driving in poles for the beans to climb on. Felt a little like an idiot! It kind of defeated one of the reasons to grow a garden like this . . .

Steve
wondering what happened to the 9' or 10' Painted Mountain he grew before

I enjoyed green beans from the Sisters Garden for lunch today. DW was able to squeeze into the garden and fish a few beans out. I think I'll leave the rest to dry for bean soup sometime this winter!

Here is a picture of the west end of that little garden:

The Rock Star pumpkin vines have produced 6 fruits. They aren't as large as they'd have been if the vines had been growing by themselves, I suppose. Still, they've done well. The Buttercup squash is also maturing a crop and, for some reason, I seem to have a vine producing blonde fruit in there! It may be a Cha Cha Kabocha squash but either way, the fruit is the wrong color!

The Painted Mountain corn IS smaller than I had expected and experienced a few years ago. Some of the pole beans ignored my poles and climbed on the corn. It got so that I couldn't get in there to try to convince the bean vines to use the poles so one corn plant, at least, has bent way over with the beans' weight. If I stay with Painted Mountain, I think I'll use a half-runner bean next year.

Weeds? There just about are none! Between the pumpkin and squash covering the ground, the corn growing above and the beans filling available space between - virtually no sun can reach a weed.

The sweet corn elsewhere has just now matured! (I had some Kandy King last week and Sugar Snow over the weekend. Bodacious and Sugar Buns will be next!) The Painted Mountain is probably ahead of the sweet corn. If there was a frost next week, I suspect that the harvested ears would look just fine. They don't look too big, however.

I think I will be happy with how things turn out with this Fall Harvest approach to raising a Sisters Garden.

Steve

I think the original three sisters methods were often grown much differently than most people try today. I have also thought about trying the corn clumping method. I've grown teosinte, and tillered corn often reminds me of a giant bunch grass.

Anyway, I think planting the crops together is a good idea, but I think they all should maybe be planted some distance away from each other. I also think getting the right varieties is important. I am currently trying to breed my own Indian corn, and this year i had a few with massive stocks and huge ears even though i planted my corn way too close together (on purpose to find corn with good root systems). Painted Mountain corn was also in my mix this year, but many of them grew poorly for me (especially the dwarf ones). Anyway, hopefully i can eventually select a good corn for my yard.

This year i also planted some native varieties of beans that are starting to get rare. I planted Anasazi, Zuni Gold (four corners gold bean), Black Appaloosa, Red Appaloosa,, Rio Zape, and Four Corners runner bean. Interestingly enough the Zuni Gold and Anazasi (which are related) did the best, and Four Corners Runner bean also did well. One of the Anasazi beans even did climb on one of the corn plants, but did not cause any problems. (Bindweed caused way more problems than any of the beans.) So, maybe try some new varieties, and also plant them a few feet away from the base of the corn.

i also planted sunflowers this year. You wouldn't believe how many native bees LOVED those!

I planted a patch of watermelons this year near the corn, sunflowers, and beans. There were plenty of native bees pollinating the watermelons.

Interesting ideas, Keen!

I will need to explore them when it comes time to order seed for next year's Sisters Garden!

Thank you!

Steve

This concept is very intriguing - I may talk with DH about following this plan for next year!

Digit - your garden and photos are amazing! I especially like your pumpking photos. Question - I see some poles in the photo of your 3 sisters garden from your post on July 27. So you added those in for additional support for the pole beans?

Marj

Yep, that's what I felt I had to do, Marj -- add in the poles as additional support for the beans.

I don't really mind growing climbing beans on poles except that I have to pay attention to their location since a sprinkler can't really blast its way thru a vine-covered teepee.

The teepees usually have to be set up right in the middle of everything so that water can fall on all sides.

Steve

I just saw this, so it's a late comment, but here's what I did this year.

I planted one large section of corn just west of my large section of beans, and surrounded the whole thing with hills of squash. Next year I'll swap the locations of the corn and beans so that the beans can spread around their nitrogen fixing benefits. The squash around the outside should help deter rodents (although the squash on the north side of the corn didn't do much- it was pretty shaded, but it also didn't get watered well- luckily there wasn't a huge rodent problem this year)

When I've done three sisters all together, it seems like nothing really does well enough to get a good crop out of it.

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Largest ears are about 8 1/2" long. Not so big but the plants really did a fairly good job in production - nearly all had 2 ears.

Now, to finish the harvest out there in the Sisters Garden! It rained again this morning but I need to pick the pole beans and put them somewhere they can finish drying. I've already had a winter squash . . . well, the one that hadn't quite matured. Pumpkins have been brought in.

I'll try a cornbread recipe that calls for "milling" corn soaked overnight with the food processor. Don't have any idea if that will work . . . But if so, before too long I should be able to have cornbread with a pot of beans and a baked squash!!

Steve