Rewilding My Lot

See this earlier post for a general summary of the Three Sisters Garden and preparation of the growing mounds.

Each of my five Three Sisters mounds received four corn seeds of the variety Ambrosia (Zea mays hybrid) on March 17, 2024, and ten bean seeds of the variety Blue Lake FM-1K (Phaseolus vulgaris) on April 6, 2024.

As of April 23, 2024, this is the tally of surviving plants:

• 19 (of 20) corn plants. I had no redundancy in the planting, so they all stay. They currently range in height from 7 to 19 inches.
• 49 (of 50) bean plants. I only need two for each corn plant, so anything more than two per corn stalk will be discarded and composted once I see what is going where. The beans aren’t long enough to reach the corn plants yet, but they will be encouraged to climb when they are. A few of the beans are having to grow back after being partly eaten by caterpillars.

Around the perimeter of each mound, four summer squash seeds were planted of the variety Early Prolific Straightneck (Cucurbita pepo). I only need two per mound, so I’ll check and cull in a few weeks.

So now all three “sisters” are in the ground. The corn provides a stalk for the beans to climb. The beans fix nitrogen to feed the soil. And squash vine leaves shade the soil for the others. This is a lovely cooperative planting scheme that was developed by Native Americans and I have been eager to try it since I heard about it last year.