Three Sisters Garden Experiment

This year Cindy decided to try a "Three Sisters" garden using a companion planting philosophy drawn from several different Native American cultures.  The three sisters are pole beans, squash and corn.  The beans contribute nitrogen to the soil, the corn provides an upright structure for the bean tendrils to climb, and the large leaves of the squash plants keep the roots of all the plants shaded and cool in the heat of summer.  https://www.groworganic.com/organic-gardening/articles/three-sisters-companion-planting-method

That's the theory, anyway.

It started well enough; Cindy was pleased that all the plants germinated.

Everything Came Up!

And they grew.

"The Corn Is As High..."

And they grew some more.

Corn Flower

The corn produced its flowers, and the beans produced, well, ... beans.  Lots of beans.  Lots and lots of beans.

Cindy And Our Friend Lisa With Beans.  Lots of Beans

It began to look a bit like a jungle in that raised bed.

We had some of the corn last night for dinner.  It was sweet, but not too sweet, and juicy.  I think Cindy was pleased with it--she grew up in Northern Indiana, and if there's one thing an Indiana girl knows, it's corn, although I hadn't realized that this was the first time she had ever actually grown corn.

Apparently the corn is pollinated by the wind, which needs to reach every kernel to fertilize it, so the wind must have done its job well.  The beans were clearly pretty happy with the arrangement, but I'm not sure if we got any squash.  The squash flowers are pollinated by bees, who carry pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers.  Unfortunately, that means that both the male and female flowers need to be open at the same time; since the flowers only last for one day, that means timing is everything, and if they don't get pollinated there's no fruit produced.  In this bed the plants were so dense that it was difficult to see if there were any flowers.

And now it's almost done for the season.

End of the Season

Corn Silk!

Squash Sling

Squash Blossom

The squash are growing so rapidly in the raised bed that Cindy has had to construct a framework of poles to support them.

As usual, the male and female blossoms open at different times, so Cindy keeps her paintbrush handy to transfer pollen from one to the other when she has a chance.  Since the blossoms only last one day, some pollinator has to make sure that it gets transferred from the male plant to the female.  See "Sex In The Garden".

Squash Forming

She has even gone so far as to pick one of the male flowers and keep it in a bag in the refrigerator in the garage to try to use that pollen whenever one of the female blossoms opens.  

So we were happy to see a squash forming on one of the vines the other day, but they grow at such a rapid rate that Cindy became concerned that the weight of the squash would eventually pull it off the vine before she was ready to pick it.  

That led her to another engineering solution:  a sling taped to the crossbar to support the growing squash.  

Squash in a Sling

Reminds me of a Bette Midler song.