3 Sisters Method question and adaptation question?

[Birdsonghill]

Experimentation brings new methods to light! My latest experiments are with deer control with non lethal and non chemical methods. I already know the best method is an expensive seven foot high secure wire and /or electric fence, but I search for less expensive alternatives. The Dewitt co. deer netting is about $120 delivered to me for a little over 300 feet x seven feet tall. It works well if secured at the bottom and no violent storms or accidents with equipment snagging it. It is nearly invisible even close up to me. I have had both problems with high winds blowing limbs through and destroying the fence and my tractor wheel catching the fabric mowing grass$$. A large buck busted through and tore down a side when he got hung up on his antlers, but I was able to put it back up. It worked perfectly a couple years and failed a couple years, multiple times. It will last and be reusable with care and luck , for a few years. 50/50 for me. It is a bit too light and invisible I think to stand up to the rigors of field use. If it gets heavier it will likely go up in cost. Doing nothing here means a total destruction of any melon, pea or corn crop. They eat the apples and other fruit off all the unprotected trees to about seven feet above the ground level around here. All the deep freezers around here are full of venison but the herds thrive. I don't hunt anymore. but am not opposed to it or accepting gifts of venison. The fruit and garden fed deer are delicious and nutritious! Anyway my neighbor found some construction site orange plastic webbing like net that is substantial and looks like it may hold up well. It is only six feet tall however, and that is too low ,I think. I have tried a lot of old timers tales of remedies such as pouches /sachets of human hair around the garden fence, urinating around the gardens perimeter, using predator urine sachets, scare crows and solar motion sensor lights. They did not perform well for me. The deer seem to appreciate the solar lights helping them see their dinner better. Any more suggestions, of inexpensive, non lethal control methods for keeping deer out of the melon patch?

 

[SmiYa0126]

This account on you tube leverages the sisters method. They're in Pittsburgh area.

 

[Birdsonghill]

Back to the three sister method , it always worked best for me using heirloom varieties, the older usually the better. Tall old corn heirlooms like Cherokee White, Red or Kentucky Butcher, or other old tall growing heirlooms combined with heirloom squash/pumpkins that were here growing when the settlers arrived or not long afterwards and old corn field bean varieties like Cherokee corn field bean or a vigorous heirloom pole bean like Dean's purple pole bean from Foggy Bottom, Tn. and some others. The tall corn and vigorous pumpkins help shade the soil while the hardy and vigorous beans seem to have a desire to reach the top! From about a seventy foot circle TSG I got a years worth of corn bread and grits plus seed for the next year. I ate the small tasty Seminole pumpkins all winter and the next summer with some still holding when harvesting the next years crop! The beans did well too and gave many a picking and fine meal with some to can as well. The insects and weather did not faze the crops, thought the beans suffered a lot of damage in places at times in the garden they still made a lot of beans. I used only compost in the planting hills and a little fish emulsion one time shortly after the corn came up the first year. In later years, I omitted the fish emulsion and sawn no difference in the final yield of corn, using by then Tennessee red cob. The Kentucky Butcher excelled in the Three sister gardens and gave me the largest overall harvest of all three crops I ever got, but the resulting Gray cornmeal turned off my wife, even though it tasted great and was very ornamental with the mixed colors. IT was over twelve feet tall mostly and the second tallest I grew. The Cherokee White was over 14 feet tall, some to 16-18 feet high and was delicious. IT gave a lower yield when some lodged and blew down in a thunder storm were voles/rodents got to some of the ears. Also , only one ear per stalk produced usually. Too tall! I tried over the years common garden varieties in the TSG but they usually disappointed or were at least edged out by older heirlooms. Insect resistance is the biggest factor in the choice of squash/pumpkins followed by vigorous long vines and lots of big leaves. Shade tolerant insect resistant pole bean varieties were best supplied by traditional heirloom varieties and out produced popular more modern varieties for me in the TSG. I found that a few early weedings were all that was needed for the crops to outgrow the weeds for the most part. These days that is more than I am able to accomplish without misery. That is why I have gone back to row cropping corn were I can mechanically cultivate the rows and reduce the hand weeding. I grow squash/pumpkins ,like melons, under ground cover only now. I have to spray more OG approved insect control now, it seems and that is expensive. Just my garden observations in regards to the method.

 

[akroberts1085]

Experimentation brings new methods to light! My latest experiments are with deer control with non lethal and non chemical methods. I already know the best method is an expensive seven foot high secure wire and /or electric fence, but I search for less expensive alternatives. The Dewitt co. deer netting is about $120 delivered to me for a little over 300 feet x seven feet tall. It works well if secured at the bottom and no violent storms or accidents with equipment snagging it. It is nearly invisible even close up to me. I have had both problems with high winds blowing limbs through and destroying the fence and my tractor wheel catching the fabric mowing grass$$. A large buck busted through and tore down a side when he got hung up on his antlers, but I was able to put it back up. It worked perfectly a couple years and failed a couple years, multiple times. It will last and be reusable with care and luck , for a few years. 50/50 for me. It is a bit too light and invisible I think to stand up to the rigors of field use. If it gets heavier it will likely go up in cost. Doing nothing here means a total destruction of any melon, pea or corn crop. They eat the apples and other fruit off all the unprotected trees to about seven feet above the ground level around here. All the deep freezers around here are full of venison but the herds thrive. I don't hunt anymore. but am not opposed to it or accepting gifts of venison. The fruit and garden fed deer are delicious and nutritious! Anyway my neighbor found some construction site orange plastic webbing like net that is substantial and looks like it may hold up well. It is only six feet tall however, and that is too low ,I think. I have tried a lot of old timers tales of remedies such as pouches /sachets of human hair around the garden fence, urinating around the gardens perimeter, using predator urine sachets, scare crows and solar motion sensor lights. They did not perform well for me. The deer seem to appreciate the solar lights helping them see their dinner better. Any more suggestions, of inexpensive, non lethal control methods for keeping deer out of the melon patch?

The solar lights are not a deterrent for deer. The phrase a deer in the headlights is due to the fact that they're blind so they can only feel the light.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

With the note that I don’t have the space to have tried any of this myself, I have heard of swapping out the corn for sunflowers, and swapping out the squash for melons. I also don’t know any reason why you couldn’t use peas instead of beans if that’s your preferred legume.

 

[Rillowen]

So... supposedly people say the 3 sisters method of planting beans, corn, and squash together is amazing and works well. it seems to somehow take off when the roots of the 3 plants become interconnected and start feeding each other (?) And because beans are nitrogen fixers this would especially make it work well.

I'm curious if you have thoughts on that?

Also, my main question is... I'm curious what else could be substituted or used in this type of combo? Like pumpkins work interchangeably with squash. And they sure as hell taste better. So that should work. But it seems like if you were changing other things in there you'd have to keep at least 1 of them to be the nitrogen fixer; which would be the beans...

I'm also wondering if you can do something with tomato and cucumbers with a nitrogen fixer? Or some other combo? What do you think?

And part of why I asked about tomato and cucumbers interlinked is that the last year and the year before I had the cucumbers planted WITH the tomato plants. And the cucumbers didn't take off and start producing until the tomato plants had gotten really big and basically made a forest mess with each other and the cucumbers... but if they were competing for energy then in theory I shouldn't have gotten any cucumber harvest at all. Instead I got cucumber production go up when they should have been drowned out from the tomato stuff.

So maybe more stuff can interconnect and share resources besides just corn, beans, and squash?

I really hope for some feedback on this and to understand it better. Because it seems like other combinations would be possible.

Thank you!

There is actually some scientific basis for this method, the 3 crops have different root depths, nutritional needs, and sunlight needs.
The squash/pumpkin (i like to use butternut squash, tastes like pumpkin with more flavor but better nutrition an production) shades of soil to help keep the moisture in, with the roots going fairly deep and thus brining up nutrients and moisture, it likes sun but since it covers the ground so well isn't harmed much by the shade. The corn has shallow roots so the shade helps them stay moist and is a nitrogen hungry creature, so the legumes help it alot. The legumes need the structure of the corn to reach for the sun, but won't mind the bit of shade from the corn stalk. They have middle depth roots, so their roots don't get in the way of eachother, as well as the nitrogen fixing.
The nitrogen fixing rhizobia mentioned above actually exists in the soil in most parts of the world, so the idea that you have to dip the pea/beans in it before planting is a bit far. However, unless there is another Trifolium plant growing around it probably won't be in large enough amounts to make a noticeable nitrogen difference until you have grown the peas/beans there for a season or 2 to let the rhizobia population load of the soil increase. The best news, is that much of the world already has Trifolium population thriving were their garden was, in the form of clover! Trifolium is part of the legumes family and has more than 300 species worldwide.. all with a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria!

If you keep these reasons in mind you can find many combinations, so instance last year I planted okra (shallow root, tall stock) with clover (nitrogen fixing) and indeterminate tomatoes ( middle deep roots, needs structure). These 3 gave me fantastic crops, with the clover proving dried forage for the chickens all winter, the okra growing more than 8 ft tall and producing a total of 4lbs per stalk and the tomatoes buckets full.

In another place I had lesser trefoil (a type of yellow wild clover I found here, is a creeping plant with a thick mat of shallow roots, nitrogen fixing) canteloup (deep water and nutrient drawing roots, spreading ground cover leaves) and determinate tomatoes (shallower mid range roots) with added poles for tomatoe support. I tried peas, but the chickens and packrats got them all, so i had to use trefoil. It worked surprisingly well though!