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I'm in the middle of planning next year's garden (first one in quite a few years), and part of it will be a 3 sisters garden, with 15 to 20 18" wide mounds, alternating corn/beans in one and squash in the next. Will it be sufficient to swap the corn/bean & squash hills each season, or do I need to move the 3 sisters section around each year? Anyone have experience with this?
I have always heard that the 3 crops were put in the same hill together, not two different hills. And I was told that the natives that developed the method also placed a fish under each hill as a fertilizer. But I never heard that the hills needed to be moved around. I thought the reason for the 3 sisters was that each plant in the combination puts back into the soil things that the others needed to grow and the fish added the things that the 3 plants didn't add.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LAUS DEO, Where ever I go, there I am. ..... major at nwi dot net ..... Zone 6a, Eastern Washington, sagebrush high desert, Columbia plateau.
Posts: 2584 | Location: Eastern Washington State, zone 6a. | Registered: December 13, 2004
I planted a 3 sisters garden this year and I plan on another one for next season.
I did hills of Corn/beans and hills of squash. Actually I do not think hills are needed in my area, for others there may be a benefit to hilling.
As for rotation the corn and beans will feed off of each other. The squash should be rotated mainly to avoid bugs. I would burn everything in the fall and then rotate the two different hill types.
Burning crop residue causes the loss of more nutrients then it is worth, much better is to just cut the crop residue down and let it feed the soil. Second to that would be removing it from the garden and composting it.
The sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, it is brown knees.
Posts: 2178 | Location: Central Michigan along the Lakeshore | Registered: August 28, 2004
Thanks for the replies. DeanRIowa, Renees Graden was the web site I got the idea from. Lots of little hills seemed easier to me than 3ft wide ones, plus it's easier to find scrap lumber to edge around 18" hills than 3' ones, & I wanted it to be sort of a permanent raised bed since the rest of the garden will be 4' by 8' raised beds.
