Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

I have heard about the cultivation of beans, corn and pumpkin, called the three sisters, practices by the American natives.  However, I don’t know how this is done in practice.  Are these plants cultivated at random in the same field, or are they cultivated in rows in close proximity to each other?  Are they sown at the same time, or are the sowing dates staged?  How exactly is it done? 

 

Anyway, too impatient to thoroughly investigate the matter, I went ahead this year and tried it out.  I broadcast all seeds at random into an existing stand of weeds, trampled down the weeds, spread ½ inch of compost and toped everything with 1 to 2 inches of mulch.  It all went well, except that now, nearly 3 months later, the pumpkin leaves are starting to shade the bush beans.  The beans have flowered, and I have started harvesting, so perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much that the beans are in the shade of the pumpkin leaves.  I wonder, once the seed pods have formed, is photosynthesis via the leaves still necessary, or can the seed pods mature solely with the energy supplied by the roots?

 

I also thought that perhaps if I had delayed sowing the pumpkins by 2 to 3 weeks, I might have been able to avoid this problem.  What do you think?  Any information regarding the 3 sisters is welcome.

 

Dieter