Order In Chaos

Three Sister’s Harvest

This year I tried planting the three sister companions: squash, beans, and corn.

Specifically, pumpkins, scarlet runners, and sweet corn:

The corn supported the beans, the pumpkins shaded the ground, and the beans fixed nitrogen back into the soil:

Our harvest:

Would I plant it again? Nope. It was fun, and cute, but rather impractical for our season. The beans were tricky to pick while young and green (I had to step over and through the pumpkin vines, and they were rather hard to see). The corn was stunted due to my needing to start them indoors (it totally killed their tap roots. They only grew about 4 feet tall.) The pumpkins, however, were very happy!