Three Sisters

Good evening all.

So there is this awesome organization in town known as FRESH that is all about community, sustainability, accessibility to and education on, healthier food options. They have a community garden in town and a farm the next town over. It was while I was working at the farm this morning that I had the inspiration for this latest post. Today we had set up rows of trellises, under which we planned to plant peas. Now the purpose of the trellises was to give the pea plants (the variety of which would grow tall) something to lean on, support.

So while thinking about this, my mind wandered back to something I learned about a while back in my ethnobotany class--The Three Sisters. In farming, there is something known as intensive agriculture (think neat straight rows) and extensive agriculture (may also refer to horticulture or slash & burn and is a little more free form, a little more sophisticated), the latter of which the Three Sisters falls under. But what exactly is this Three Sisters I speak of? The Three Sisters are actually three plants--corn, beans, and squash (or pumpkin)--which, in traditional Iroquois and other New England native tribes, are planted together, a technique known as companion planting. Little hills are formed in the soil, in which the corn is planted. Once they have grown a bit, the beans and the squash are planted around them, and this works for a variety of reasons. First, because the beans grow vertically while the squash grow laterally, they don't interfere with each other. Secondly, as with the trellis and the peas, the corn stalks provide support for the growing bean plants. Thirdly (and here we have a little bit of biology), because beans (as well as other legumes) are nitrogen fixers [that is they are able to take atmospheric nitrogen, N2, (which cannot be used by plants in that form) and convert or 'fix' it into a form usable to plants , namely ammonium, NH4, or ammonia, NH3], they provide the soil with the necessary nitrogen which can then be taken up and used by the other plants. There you have it, companion planting in a nutshell! Pretty nifty, eh?

So that is your botanical (and biological) and ethnobotanical fun fact for the day. Enjoy!