ypsi~dixit

The Recreation Park Three Sisters Garden is based on traditional Iroquois planting methods.

Our garden contains 23 large flat mounds and 5 small round ones. Each mound is raised about 8” which helps the soil warm earlier in the spring. The flat tops help water concentrate around the plants, yet drain off quickly. Each flat-topped mound was planted with 6 corn seeds and 4 bean seeds. Between the large mounds, squash are planted in the smaller mounds.

The varieties & timeline is as follows:

1550 – Lenape (Delaware Indian) Blue Shackamaxon Beans, a pre-contact crop
1750 - “Vermont” cranberry beans, grown all along the east coast for centuries and adopted from Iroquois tribes
1850 - Long Island Cheese squash, so called by white settlers for its resemblance to a cheese wheel
1900 - Country Gentleman “shoepeg” or rowless corn, adapted from native variety of white corn.

--From our informational signs (in progress)

Dear Plus These Crops Dry By Themselves: that's very cool. I'll be eager to see how it grows through the season and hope to see more pictures.

I was also thinking about how this "community of plants" know by the Indians as the Sustainers contrasts with the European "staff of life," i.e., bread. Eaten together, you get a full protein and a healthy diet. Eat bread only and you get ...scurvy.

I didn't know that. That's amazing. Protein from the beanios, fiber and surely something else from the corn, and minerals from the squashies.

Ah, there's scurvy again...this blog is certainly riddled with references to scurvy, which is no one's fault but mine.

It's true that I've been eating a LOT more fruit since reading about the Franklin Expedition and the no fewer than 14 expeditions that went out to search for them. I just stopped by the co-op today on my way to work and got a peach and 3 Valencias. One Valencia left over. I'm bubbling with Vitamin C. No spongy gums here (shudder).

Now, that's interesting. In the Rec Center garden, the squash are in their own separate smaller mounds. In my case, I alternated planting squash and beans in the mounds, which are all the same size and roughly one foot high and, like yours, about one step apart.

Well, there are a number of different styles of planting the Three Sisters based on group. The Wampanoag is an Iroquois style that includes separate mounds for squash. The Hidatsa in the Great Plains use all separate mounds, interspersed. The Zuni did something called a "waffle garden." Some nations put all three seeds into one planting hole.

There's a great book in the library that explains all these variations called, Native American gardening: stories, projects, and recipes for families by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac.

Or check out this site: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/complant.html on sustainable planting techniques. Both are great resources and that's where I got the majority of my info.

That is fascinating. I love learning more about the different styles. I suppose my garden is more the Great Plains style.

The Zuni waffle garden looks like a mound garden in reverse. Where the mound helps drain off excess water, it looks as though the waffle pattern is designed to conserve water.

The Caduto book looks great.

Now that IS fascinating, your link to the Zuni waffle garden. So clever and beautiful.

My squash are up too, but no beans. What is the deal!?! Another anxiety: if you look at the top right of the photo showing the corn above, you'll see that three mounds have very yellow, anemic-looking and short corn plants. Why!?! Naturally, this is the side of the circle most likely to be seen, as it is in proximity to the path. I hope they recover from whatever is impeding them...

Clever and beautiful is a good way to describe it. I note they have sunflowers, too, though off to the side, not plunked in the middle.

I have the same bean problem. With four exceptions--four weirdly ambitious and vigorous bean plants. The rest are AWOL. The squash are sprouting more evenly and are about an inch high.

Hm. That's odd about the corn. Sure enough, it's less then half as big as the other ones, and yellowish. Dumb questions: were all the mounds evenly watered? That shouldn't be an issue, actually, given the rain we've had. Were all the mounds fertilized? Was a different dirt used for those 3 mounds? Is that edge shaded by a tree for part of the day? Was there ever a spill of motor oil, &c. on that spot?

I am growing Italian pole beans, no corn (takes a lot of corn to really get a decent crop) or squash. Too many critters to battle for veggies. My matie made a great deterent for the bunnies though, a kind of cage over the romaine. They leave peppers and tomatoes alone, so maybe I can expand in the future.

Mary, I was doing the math on this Three Sisters garden and I figured out I should get about 180 ears of corn!!! I have 23 mounds, with an average of 4 stalks per mound, times an average of 2 ears per stalk. To me, it seems like a LOT of corn for a 20' circle. With good pollination, I might get even more. Luckily, it does dry by itself, isn't that miraculous?!

Another Native practice that I haven't mentioned is planting extra for the animals. It seems so realistic, I wonder that the practice is not more common among gardeners.

The answer to your corny diagnostic questions, Laura, is no, except to perhaps the last one. Not sure about the possibility of motor oil. People do park in the vicinity for Little League games--perhaps that is indeed the case. :-(