Companion Planting

Recall if you please, the Guinness Girls in the Three Sisters garden, summer last. The Guinness Girls are currently stacking split fir in the woodshed but here stands the 3 Sisters now.

Note the beans (‘Kentucky Wonder’) wrapping around the stalks of corn (‘Sugar Dots’) whilst the pumpkin (‘Howden’, ‘Big Max’) keeps the ground from drying out (from the angle of the above photo, I can assure you, this soil is loamy and moist). This planting strategy requires little water. Beans help to anchor corn and increases soil nitrogen which corn eagerly devours. Though corn is delicious and we eagerly await for September harvesting, it has very little nutrition for the amount of nutrients it robs from the soil. Companion planting in season and mulching, regenerating soil off season, in the corn bed, is crucial. Corn proved also, to be an excellent transplanted vegetable.

The PNW has been quite cool this summer. Marine air flow off the Pacific coast keeps most mornings misty and overcast. Anytime between 10 and 2 the sun shows himself and warms up considerably. This is lovely enough for personal comfort but keeps the potential heat from accumulating each day along with needed length of direct sunlight necessary for ripening some produce.

Many plants are a fortnight or so behind schedule however, our consistent Indian Summers ( and a floating row cover) should finish off tomatoes tolerably well, and bring pumpkins to rich, smooth orange globes.

Try, next spring, alternating rows of bush beans with strawberries. Both plants will thrive and throw off better yield.

The Guinness Girls Meet the Three Sisters- Twice.

Here are the girls in the garden finishing, or rather replanting, after a naughty bantam escaped to scratch it to ruin, the Three Sisters companion garden.

The Three Sisters was developed and used by the Wampanoag, though the Iroquois seem to have developed the legend of ‘Three Sisters’. It was the Wampanoag gardens that enabled the early settlers of Jamestown to survive and thrive in the New World. Squanto was a Wampanoag who taught the newcomers to plant maize in little hills and fertilize each mound with an alewife, a species of fish (we opted not to plant our seed with such a mesmerizing animal enticement). With this efficient and intensive gardening style, each family could sustain their needs on about one acre of land. Many of the tribes of the Northeast, including the Iroquois, used the Wampanoag garden design. Planted without plowing or tilling, the traditional Wampanoag garden includes corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers.The corn and beans are planted in mounds, with squash planted between the mounds.
First, the raised corn and bean mounds must be constructed. These small mounds are laid out in rows with 4 feet between the centers of the mounds. Each mound is about 4 inches high, with a wide base (about 18 inches in diameter) that narrows to a flattened top (about 10 inches across. Plant four corn seeds about 6 inches apart and 3 inches deep in the top of each mound. Plant four beans seeds halfway down the slopes on the sides of each mound.



See the giant dryer sheet behind the girls? it's a row covering for up to 10◦ frost protection, allows the sun and water through, keeps out the birds and some air-borne dieseses. DeWitt is the name and can be aquired at

http://www.mcconkeyco.com/page.aspx?nid=27

So we planted twice, clipped some wings, and hope there’s no need for a charm.