11/25/2023 0 Comments 3 sisters garden layoutThere is a wide, wide range of sunflowers beyond production types. ( It’s the total productivity of the space that’s a wowser, versus the same area with a single crop, and usually corn gets a pretty significant boost.) I do grow some of my beans with sunflowers, but I expect the major productivity drop versus a corn planting and I do so knowing that bean production is already lower in corn-companionship stands. That’s something we’ll touch on with the planting suggestions, too. Secondly, don’t believe everything you read online – especially start-off suggestions without final results presented. We get more feedback yet, which lets us make better adjustments than we would on our own. “Well that didn’t work” is part of the feedback loop for everything from permaculture to scientific method. “No” is an option on troubleshooting and decision-making flow charts for a reason. Mostly, like many things, we just don’t hear back on it – which is sad, because some of those gardeners who are just getting started or just branching out are likely embarrassed, and think it’s them.įirst: Failures are part of any learning curve. When we hear after-action reports on this experiment, it’s usually “well boogers” or excited growers who have not yet established an on-their-own baseline yield for their squash and bean varieties. It’s more than possible that somebody’s managed successfully, but nobody I know and I’ve yet to find good results/yield data or late-season and harvest images posted by those who claim it works. Subbing sunflowers for corn in Elders mounds regularly pops up. They’re replacing nitrogen used by their companions, which means less amendment is needed in subsequent plantings. By the end of the season, the beans will have started producing excess nitrogen if the proper bacteria is present, but it’s toward the end of the season. The beans are not boosting the nitrogen for this year’s crop. We’ll also look at ways we can modify it for the crops commonly grown in today’s backyards, tubs, and big plots, compared to the traditional versions. There are now about as many ways to arrange them as there are to use the produce, which we’ll touch on later. The squash helps shade the soil, preserving moisture. The beans also replace some or all of the nitrogen used by the corn and, in trinity plantings, their third sister: squash. They also stabilize the corn, removing the need to hill it – which is good, because you’re not going to wiggle a hoe through a thriving Three Sisters mound. Pole beans are planted after a delay, and use the corn as a trellis. Succotash gardens are also billed as a survival and a storage all-in-one gardens – pretty fair assessments. It’s a proven winner large or small, throughout history, including modern university studies on yields and post-harvest soil. Corn, beans and squash are grown in close association, with each plant filling another’s needs. Three Sisters, Elders, or Iroquois mounds are one of the most common and oldest examples of companion planting to be found.
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