Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Are you familiar with the fourth sister? Cleome, Rocky Mountain Bee Plant. It 
grows wild around our beds. I'm no fan of Hemenway but he has this to say:

In the Southwest, a fourth "sister" is found in this guild: Rocky Mountain 
bee plant (Cleome serrulata). Often growing near former Anasazi 
settlements—it's virtually an indicator plant for ancient ruins—this 2- to 
5-foot tall, pink-flowered cleome is a powerful attractant for beneficial 
insects that pollinate beans and squash. The young leaves, flowers, and seed 
pods of bee plant are edible, and native people boiled and ate them, or made 
a paste from the plant for later use. Bee plant also accumulates iron, and 
thus is the source of a deep-hued paint used to create the characteristic 
black designs on Anasazi pottery. Songs and blessings of New Mexico's Tewa 
people mention corn, beans, squash, and bee plant, indicating that this 
multi-functional flower is an integral member of a sacred plant pantheon.
http://www.patternliteracy.com/gg3sisters.html

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our 
most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its 
renewal is our only hope.
   - Wendell Berry

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/29/2006 at 12:26 PM Carrie Shepard wrote:

>I'd like to try saving seed from several heirloom corn varieties this
>year with bagging and staggering the plantings to prevent
>cross-contaminations, but have not seen this done.  I just read about the
>process of bagging and handpollinating in Seed to Seed.
>
>  Can anyone advise me about this further and tell me where to find the
>right type of bags?
>
>  Oh, I'm also trying the 3 sisters approach with a rattlesnake pole bean
>and black zuchini, planting closely in a 3 foot wide bed.
>
>  thanks,
>  Carrie