Planting Corn Squash and Beans Using The Three Sisters Method

We're here at Sierra Harvest Food Love Project. Behind me is a technique of planting called three sisters. We're going to show you how to do that today. Companion planting is a useful gardening technique where you plant certain veggies together to take advantage of their natural tendencies and relationships. This is a technique that's been practiced for centuries and most famously with the three sisters planting. The three sisters is a combination of three plants working together. Sister beans deposit nitrogen from the air into the soil in a form that the plants can use. Plant pole beans such as Blue Lake, Scarlet Runner, or Italian Snap, not bush beans. Sister corn provides support for bean vines to climb upon. Plant your favorite. You can use sweet corn, dent corn, popcorn, or even a combination. And sister squash shades the ground with its large leaves to provide a good growing environment for all the sisters. Squash can be winter type or summer types or both. There are many variations on a three sisters garden layout but all of them plant the sisters in clusters on low wide mounds rather than in a single row. The Wampanoag method is best known because it was the planting method that the Iroquois taught the early colonial settlers. Other methods include the Hidatsa method where each sister is planted in clusters on their own mounds and the Zuni method which is best for arid regions. The first thing is to find a location with at least six hours of full sun every day. The soil should be full of organic matter and weed free. We're going to build a mound which we're going to plant the three sisters in. Build each mound so that it is four inches tall, 18 inches in diameter at the base with a flat top that is about 10 inches across. Space mounds so their centers are four feet apart. You can start your garden when the nighttime temperatures reach at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit but not any later than June 1st. We're going to plant the corn on the flat part of the mound with six inch spacing and you don't want to plant the other seeds until the corn is about knee high. You can also transplant the corn to get a head start and then plant the seeds for the squash and the beans at the same time as you plant the transplants. If you coat your bean seeds with an inoculant before planting you'll fix nitrogen in the soil and that will benefit all of the sisters. Here at Food Love Project the kids actually planted the three sisters and they used flags to mark where their seeds went. Sometimes a fourth sister is included either a sunflower or bee balm or amaranth. This sister also supports the beans, lures the birds away from the corn with their seeds and attracts insect pollinators. This three sisters mound is about a month old and it's a perfect example of having four to five corn stalks in the middle with the fourth sister as an amaranth. The beans have been planted they're going to get started and they're going to start growing up the corn and the amaranth and now we're going to plant the squash. Planting the beans a few weeks after the corn ensures that the corn stalks will be strong enough to support the fast growing beans. We're planting the squash now that the beans are about six inches tall. Spacing should be about 18 inches apart. For a mound this size that means about five squash plants. You might want to put two seeds in each hole just in case you don't get 100% germination and they go around the perimeter of the mound. Plant your three sisters garden which is companion planting at its best and grow organic for life.