The Three Sisters is (um, are?) the name of an ancient farming technique, in which beans, maize and squash were planted in the same place.
The Three Sisters, photo by Abri le Roux
The sisters work collaboratively: maize provides a stalk for beans to grow on; beans provide mineral nitrogen for nitrogen-greedy maize; beans and maize together provide shade and humidity for squash; and squash provides weed and erosion control for the other two. And that's only a taste of the benefits of the technique.
Planting beans, squash and maize together was truly a stroke of genius--not to mention a recipe for succotash--and the combination probably dates between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago.
Read More about the Three Sisters
- The Three Sisters
- Domestication History of Maize
- Domestication History of Beans
- Domestication History of Squash
Comments
I planted the three sisters in my garden, and it worked very well, except the squash did so well that it got hard to get to the inner rows, and some of the sqash were hidden.
thanks–i was thinking about trying it this year, just for fun…
The process was that the squash came up first and cleared the area
away from weeds. Then the maize grew up forming the bean stalk.
This is still practiced by the Lacandonians in Chiapas and Petán for
the past 3000 years