Rewilding My Lot

Soon after the Three Sisters corn harvest, the corn plants were pretty much dead. A big takeaway from this experiment for me is that vegetable gardening takes more water than does native plant gardening, and if I am to do this again next year, I will need to rethink my watering strategy.

I still have bean and squash plants growing, though, and there is a very clear progression of growth through the five mounds — mounds nearer the house have more growth. Here are photos of each mound starting nearest the house:

The five mounds have received equal water. Each mound was prepared in the same way, except that mounds 2 and 4 contain extra fertilizer in the form of a fish. So the only explanation that I can think of for the clear gradient in growth of the five mounds is light/shade variation, which might in turn affect water evaporation. Mound 1 near the house is at the east end of the row, and mound 5 is at the west end. In the morning as the sun rises over the nearby house, sunlight hits mound 5 first and mound 1 last. In the evening, houses to the west of us are taller and further away, so once the sun lowers behind those houses, most of the back yard here enters shade at about the same time.

I don’t know if there will be any beans to harvest, but squash are certainly developing. This one (from Mound #3) was ripe enough to harvest just after I took this photo.