Week 6: Three Sisters Planting

  How closely our culture and agricultural practices are tied!  The Three Sisters is not only an Iroquois farming system but is also an agricultural custom steeped in legends and myths.  In this planting system, corn, pole beans and squash are planted together, or interplanted, in mounded hills. “Corn, beans, and squash are considered by the Iroquois to be special gifts from the Great Spirit” (Eames-Sheavly). Each of these crops is believed to be protected by one of the ‘Three Sisters,’ a group of spirits collectively called “De-o-ha-ko” or “our sustainers” (Eames Sheavly). The legend of the sisters chronicles how they lived happily together in a field, and were harvested one by one. The smallest of the sisters (representing the bean) was harvested in late summer. The second sister (representing squash) was harvested at the beginning of fall and the third sister (corn) was harvested in late fall. While The Three Sisters together provided a varied diet, the system was also carried on as a means of respectfully using the land as interplanting has numerous ecological benefits. Beans, a member of the legume family, are nitrogen fixing plants, meaning they take nitrogen from the air and convert it into a compound that acts as a natural fertilizer. When the beans are harvested, the fixed nitrogen in their roots is released, and fertilizes the ground for the next year’s crop (which is extremely beneficial as corn needs a high amount of nitrogen in order to flourish). The corn acts as a support for the pole beans, while the squash grows out over the soil helping to control the weeds.  

In our 1812 Garden, our Three Sisters are doing very well. The corn has tasseled already, the beans are starting to intertwine themselves with the corn, and the squash is starting to spread. Together they are some of the healthiest plants in the garden and already benefiting from interplanting in the form of pest control. There are only two pests I’ve encountered in the garden so far, but the Three Sisters squash are the only cucurbit plants which have no damage from the Cucumber Beetle. The second pest, the Japanese Beetle, attacks without discretion but its damage is hardly noticeable and overall its presence in the Three Sisters plot is lower than the rest of the garden as well.

This photo shows a "Three Sisters" interplanted mound in our 1812 Garden. There are multiple corn stalks thriving on each hill (the tallest of the plants). The small, triangular leaves are the bean plants, which are begining to wind their way up the corn. The wide flat leaves in the bottom left of the photo belong to the squash, which is spreading as a ground cover.