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, Knot 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 gonna plant the three sisters in. Build
each mound so that it is four inches tall, eighteen inches in diameter at the
base with a flat top that is about ten 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. First we're gonna 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 The Food
Love Project the kids actually planted the three sisters and they use 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 4 to 5 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 gonna
start growing up the corn and the amaranth and now we're gonna 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
eighteen 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!