I hope the critters stay away!!!
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Has anyone grown a 3 sisters garden? Iâm thinking of trying one next year and including the kids as a learning opportunity. From what Iâve read it doesnât seem like the best bang for your buck from a purely food production standpoint but it seems really fun and exciting.
3 sisters is corn, beans, and squash. The corn grows to be a living trellis for the beans, the beans put nitrogen back to the soil for the corn and squash, and the squash is a ground cover for the roots.
I love the idea and we might try 2-3 mounds but if anyone has experience/pictures from their own garden I would love to see!
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Iâve done it; traditionally it would be planted in hills with a dead fish in each hill for fertilizer. Not having fish , I substituted agreed horse manure. It worked well. The next time I tried it, though, raccoons climbed and broke the cornstalks as soon as the ears were big enough to be tempting for them.
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Yes, we did it at our community garden! I wish I had pictures 
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I didnât do it but when I was looking up if it was a good idea for a pretty small, raised bed situation the consensus I found is that itâs an excellent technique for farming: if you have a lot of space and donât want to spend a lot of effort pruning/weeding/watering than growing three different storage crops in a way that means you donât have to check on them very often is a great idea. If you have small raised beds, youâre going to get like 1-2 groups per bed, which probably wonât be enough corns to get good pollination.
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All I know about home corn growing is that Sarah Marshall of Youâre Wrong About grew corn in her yard and hand-pollinated it.
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Dh did it with a couple of mounds and it was okay but not very productive. He was looking for heritage seeds and had a hard time finding beans and corn that were what he wanted. It was interesting and I think it would be cool for kids, but I am all about maximizing my food production. Lol
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To add on what others have already said,
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If you do grow a a small amount of corn (which this would be) you really have to hand pollinate. Corn is wind pollinated and you very likely wonât get good pollination otherwise. I have had great success hand pollinating corn.
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Corn is one of the very few crops that you are eating the seed of this year, meaning you should only plant one variety. If you plant multiple varieties, youâll get cross pollination and it is a real crap shoot what you will end up getting as a crop. (Or else plant varieties with vastly different maturation dates so that they are receptive to pollination at least a few weeks apart.) This is contrary to most crops, which when if you hear people saying within year cross pollination it is simply not true (any cross pollination results would show up in the following year from saved seeds).
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My understanding is that three sisters was traditionally done with dent corn (the corn used to make corn meal) not sweet corn? I think the stalks are maybe sturdier or something? Sweet corn is pretty sturdy as well, but just an additional point of information (I think, maybe verify). Although I donât doubt that it can be done!
If you do it, definitely document here!
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Mine was field corn (dent corn). The stalks were tough enough for climbing beans but not climbing racoons.
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I hearted but I donât heart that. One year I had something eat my (sweet) corn⌠The stalks were not broken though. I blame squirrels. (Possibly rats, this was in SLC, I never saw any ever but people in the neighborhood said they were around. Although a family of raccoons did legit live in the storm drain across the street from me (it doesnât rain in summer, soâŚ), they never bothered any of my plants (probably garbage scavengers, being city raccoons).)
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