Our Three Sisters Garden and living in Relationship

   Wife and I have been on a healthy eating kick the past 12 months.  I shed 36 pounds  in 6 months when I went from highly processed foods to eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts and no white breads.  Simple as that, cut out the highly processed sugar and the pounds started coming off.

    That’s why the article on homemade bread caught my eye as I was strolling past the magazine rack @ Walmart last week:

 

        That’s not what I wanted to talk about right now, but it does give  you a sense of where my brain has been the past 12 months.

 In the  January 2011 issue of Mother Earth News  was also a story on  Floriani Red Flint.  

(It’s an heirloom variety of corn)

I want to grow some now….

talk about the power of the printed page.

     I told my buddy Steve a week ago to help me design me a garden plot   I didn’t have to weed this year.  

     Steve and I  get together on occasion over lots of coffee to  chew the fat on everything from heirloom  tomatoes,  seed saving,   politics,  the underground railroad in Iowa, war,  current events…you name it..all topics are fair game and while he and I are in different camps  politically and spiritually, mutual  respect underpins  our discourse, so I always come away mentally stimulated.    

    Steve had mentioned something called a “sisters garden” in passing a few weeks ago, but I didn’t get it.,

Thursday I saw another reference to “The Three Sisters Gardening” philosophy and I finally I got it…really got it.

     In simple terms,  you plant 3 companion crops in the same area….corn, beans and  squash.    The beans add nitrogen to the soil, which the corn uses and vise versa.  The Squash (I’m going to plant an heirloom pumpkin) vines out and shades between the rows effectively shading out the weeds.  The corn acts as a natural trellis for the beans (you need to plant the pole bean variety)   so the beans climb the corn.

        Here’s a diagram of what a 10 ft by 10 ft plot would look like:

 The “three sisters” garden has been around for 1000′s of years 

Why have I never heard of it before this week?

Have you?

     “According to Iroquois legend, corn, beans, and squash are three inseparable sisters who only grow and thrive together. This tradition of interplanting corn, beans and squash in the same mounds, widespread among Native American farming societies, is a sophisticated, sustainable system that provided long-term soil fertility and a healthy diet to generations….

There is definitely a life  lesson in this gardening model

3 different crops with different nutritional needs living in  the same garden plot, producing different types of fruit. 

   Come to think about it,  Steve and my relationship is a little like this gardening model.  We each come to the table with different life experiences, different world views, etc.  yet we can benefit from the others insight.  

     The next time you meet someone   you know has a  different take on a current event, instead of looking @ them as a nut job who obviously doesn’t understand real life because they don’t see things as you do,  stick a cork in it.

      Instead of launching into an attack mode,   we really do need  change the tone of our social discourse.  And what better place to begin than with you? (and me)   ;-)

Wanted to close with some pictures of three sisters…..

They’re beautiful don’t you think?

They take after their mama

Different personalities

Different interests

They’re my daughters.

      “According to Three Sisters legends corn must grow in community with other crops rather than on its own – it needs the beneficial company and aide of its companions.”

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