i may need to clarify. I'm certain many of you are familiar. In my area I constantly receive a Eastbound wind steady at least 5mph up to 30mph in average temps. Absolutely horrid during inclement weather.

I just realized I should try both and see how they fare. Duh!

Bon,
How large is your garden area? The size may affect how you want to lay things out.
Also, I would mention that whatever corn you use, if it's going to support beans, it should not be a sweet corn. In fact, it probably shouldn't be any corn you can pick up from the seed rack at your local box store. Most commonly available corns have weak stalks.
Another factor to consider is that saving seed from a corn requires an absolute minimum of 200 plants. Three hundred would be much better. So, you might consider planting in rows, in a block, and giving, say, 6' distance between the rows. Plant your beans on the sides of the block and the squash around it. Be sure to hill your corn, as this lends stability in wind.

Below is a link with some valuable discussion.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Here is a link that might be useful: Link on Cornfield Beans and Corn for 3 Sisters

Here's a link to Sandhill Preservation Center's catalog. They have many very good corns and some very good beans for this purpose.

George

Here is a link that might be useful: Sandhill Preservation Center Catalog

Bon,

With regard to your specific questions:

I am assuming that when you use the term squash you mean winter squash since it is vining and most summer squash plants are more bush-like.

Corn and beans perform best when planted early enough in spring that heat doesn't negatively impact pollination. I try to have all my corn harvested before the end of July, and I generally don't plant a succession crop of sweet corn for fall because of the heat. When I do plant fall corn, it is planted in a new area. Three Sisters gardens do not lend themselves well to succession planting once they are growing because you have to disturb the roots of the existing plants in order to plant a succession crop.

You may or may not find that the Three Sisters garden remains standing in high winds. In my experience, without a windbreak (and sometimes even with a windbreak), the corn is more likely to be brought down by the wind, not less likely, because the weight of the bean vines tend to bring down corn stalks even in the absence of wind unless you plant a really, really sturdy corn variety that has huge, strong stalks and gets really tall. If the wind blows the corn plants over onto the top of the squash plants, it is almost impossible to straighten up the tangled mess of bean vine-covered corn plants, and your squash plants will be damaged by the corn and beans being blown down on top of them. Often it breaks the leaves. You also likely will walk on and break your squash vines while attempting to straighten up your corn plants.

If okra is to be planted in your Three Sisters Garden as a fourth sister, it needs to be planted far away enough from everything else and especially the winter squash plants that you can harvest okra every day or every other day without trampling any of your three or four sisters.

The marigolds likely will be shaded out by the squash plants which always get huge and run everywhere, including into places where you don't want winter squash. I have had winter squash and pumpkin plants (pumpkins, for the record, are winter squash) run from one side of the garden to another, burying every other plant in their path. I try to plant them near the garden fence and mostly train them to grow outside into the pasture beyond the fence instead of into other areas where I don't want them. I have a love-hate relationship with marigolds. I love way they look, but in my garden they are spider mite magnets so I use them as a trap crop, letting them grow until they have a heavy infestation of spider mites, and then I pull up the plants, put them in a trash bag, tie it closed and put it into a trash can with a lid. I don't want any of those spider mites escaping before the trash is hauled away. I generally get better results planting short cosmos like Cosmic Orange or Cosmic Yellow instead of marigolds. They attract the beneficial insects and are not as prone to get spider mites.

I have grown some form of a Three Sisters Garden almost every year (this is my 14th spring garden here, or 15 if you count the little one I planted before we even broke ground for the house) although often it is a 4 or 5 Sisters garden, and I've almost never done it the same way twice because I haven't been entirely happy with its performance in one way or another.

As George said, most pole beans will bring down most kinds of sweet corn because of their rampant growth. I have had some luck with Texas Honey June, an heirloom sweet corn from Texas that gets pretty large and tall, but even it will bend under the load of heavy bean plants. Mexican Black corn does better, and some of the field corns in the link George provided would be better than Mexican Black. Seneca Red Stalker and Mixed Colors Broom Corn (grown for ornamental seed heads) have worked well for me in a Three or Four Sisters garden.

I like the Three Sisters garden for many reasons. Growing squash amongst the corn plants seems to help keep raccoons out of the corn to a certain extent, though it doesn't work every year---only most years or only to some degree. However, the beans are the problem area. I now plant them only on the northernmost row of the corn because it is just too hard to harvest the beans otherwise without trampling the squash plants, and it can complicate harvesting the ears of corn because the vines will wrap themselves around the ears. Instead of planting pole beans on all 4 sides of the corn, I put the pole beans on a woven wire fence and let them form the wind break that will protect everything else.

One of my favorite Three Sisters gardens contained Early Sunglow and Dwarf Blue Jade corn because I could harvest them fast, and I planted bush beans and half runners, and for squash I planted small sugar pie pumpkin. The corn was planted in late March and harvested in latest May or early June. The beans were planted in April after the corn was a foot or two tall and they were harvested in June and July. The small sugar pie pumpkins were planted in May and harvested beginning in August. So, each of them grew into one another's space up to a point, but it wasn't a big tangled mess at corn harvest time.

When I plant, I don't plant in little mounds or hills like you're describing. My corn is in a big block in the center of the planting area. I divide the corn planting area in half, leaving a big wide path down the middle of it. Into that path I plant two winter squash plants, usually Seminole because it is squash vine borer resistant. I usually plant 4 more Seminole plants, one on each side of the Three Sistsers garden, and I plant them 4 to 6 feet away from the corn. Eventually they'll infiltrate the corn bed anyway, but by then the corn is pretty tall and well-established and, sometimes, already being harvested.

Timing of the elements of the Three Sisters garden is very important. I usually plant corn the earliest for several reasons. First, it tolerates cool soil better than beans and squash do. Secondly, it needs to get some good height to it before the beans sprout or the beans can outgrow it. Third, I want the corn roots very well-established before the bean roots start competing with them for nutrients.

I plant the beans secondly, and don't plant them until the corn is 1 to 2 feet tall. They sprout fast in the warmer soil and grow rapidly so the corn needs that head start so they don't overwhelm it. I prefer using half-runner beans or southern peas that are "supposed to be" semi-vining types. I use pink eye purple hull a lot. While they will stay shorter if there's nothing to climb, PEPH peas will climb pretty tall when they have something to climb so they do well on corn stalks. If I want to plant a tall pole bean in the Three Sisters Garden, I either plant the pole beans on the garden fence, or I plant a row of tall sunflowers between the Three Sisters garden and plant the beans to climb the sunflowers. That works only "ok". Many sunflowers are somewhat alleopathic and that can work against the beans. I also stake each tall sunflower either to the fence or to 8' tall dark green t-posts to keep the wind from knocking them down, and to enable them to support heavy pole bean plants.

The Winter Squash seeds need warm soil to sprout and they go into the ground last. Despite that, the squash vines are rampant growers and will overwhelm everything else at some point.

I'm not saying don't plant a Three Sisters garden. I love my Three Sisters plantings because they allow me to grow three or more veggies in a place where many people only grow one. However, they are hard to work with. You have to weed the garden a LOT until the squash plants are large enough to shade the ground, although heavy mulching helps reduce the weeding task to some degree. Sunflowers are often my fourth sister because you can plant them and forget about them other than staking them as they grow taller. My fifth sister usually is nasturtiums or buckwheat or both. They attract beneficial insects that help with pest control. I plant them around the 4 edges of the blocks of corn.

With your other goals of saving seeds, note that George told you how many plants are required to save seeds and most people don't have space for that many corn plants.

Unless you have a large deep freeze or intend to can corn, you don't want to plant 300 corn plants because that has the potential to give you as many as 600 ears of corn and a family cannot eat that much fresh corn fast enough. You could plant that many corn plants if you want to produce your own corn meal, but that requires a machine that will grind the meal.

If you want to grow in the most efficient and effective manner, read John Jeavons' book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." which I have linked below. If you follow his recommendations closely and carefully, which includes a focus on double digging and soil amendment and growing your own compost crops, you'll be stunned by the large yields your garden will give you. However, you won't get those huge yields the first year. What will happen is that as the soil gets better and better and you hone your skills as a gardener, the yield will get better every year. I had trouble in the beginning adapting to his recommended planting patterns and spacing because I had just tried Square Foot Gardening for 2 or 3 years and had all of that method's spacing memorized. John Jeavons planting patterns are more complicated. You basically have to picture each plant's space needs as a circle, and you plant each veggie or herb far enough away from the next closest one so that their 'circles' just touch one another's edges once they are full-sized. That allows the plants to shade the ground completely, helping keep it cool and moist and reducing weeds due to a lack of sunlight. You do have to amend your soil well, though, or there's not enough nutrients in the soil to supply the biointensive plantings with what they need.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Grow More Vegetables......

Dawn and George have given you good advice. I would also encourage you to do a search of the entire Garden Web site for "three sisters". You will find a lot of threads discussing, "If I had only known x" which I think will help you be more successful.

My biggest concern for you is wind. As George pointed out, getting the right variety of corn is paramount, as many won't hold up to Oklahoma wind, especially with the added mass of bean plants covering them. Also, given that field corn tends to work better, consider whether your family wants to eat field corn or sweet corn.

Good luck!

I forgot to ask about the willow cuttings. Do you mean cuttings to plant? As in, you're going to plant willows near your garden? I'd think really long and hard before I did that. Willows are water guzzlers and if too close to the garden, they'll steal water away from it and will infiltrate the garden with their roots. Also, willow wood is weak and breaks easily in high winds. Native willows spring up alongside our creeks and ponds and I hate them. Every time we mow around the ponds we have to stop and gather up the latest batch of dead willow limbs and haul them to the brush pile so we can mow. The only "good thing" the willows have going for them is that they are fast growers, but since almost all fast-growing trees are weak-wooded trees and very susceptible to damage and death, that's not even really a good thing.

And, if you mean willow cuttings for making a wattle fence to provide a wind break, be sure there is a barrier between the willow cuttings and the ground or your willow wattle fence may sprout and grow.

I can hardly comment. Apparently, I need to read much more! I have caught a glimpse of your comments solving me a lot of trouble (and wasted heirloom seeds).

George, I have a good sized lot in it's entirety for a city dwelling. I somehow suspected I'll be needing all of it, eventually, and you just confirmed that. The area that is currently "worked" for gardening though is only about 45' x 50' which would contain all those varieties of produce I mentioned including the corn. i still need to read your link, too. I had no idea. 200 corn plants!

Dawn, as always = outstanding! You're right. I'll be growing the willow to weave it into a fence .. and much more. Before I came to gardening I had a love of pruning trees. I'm one of those weird people who love to go out and snap twigs, wrap them with twine and settle them for winter wood stove burning. One of my more creative adventures will be to twist a few poplar trees into curious contortions. Ideally, I'll do this with bonsai but first things first. I was wondering how invasive willows are. i figured they must be to a certain point. I wasn't certain if I wanted to twist them into a living fence or just weave them after harvesting. So, thank you for the advice. I'll just harvest and weave. In addition, I was wondering where to plant the darned things and you just answered that. Likely, then, I'll be planting them next to the neighbors pond (an empty lot). That way they'll get the moisture they need but will be about 16th of a mile from my garden or anything intentionally grown! I plant to carefully section off their growth to help contain them and when I'm done.. they're gone. I'll continue to grow in pots until I need to work with them again. I bet I'll hafta dig up the earth to ensure I get them all. If they're anything like poplar trees they'll damage the ecology. Still, I have much to learn on willows. I just know they're going to be an essential element in permaculture. Perhaps I'll need to put it my living will a requirement they be destroyed upon my death ROFL

We live in a cute tiny little cottage and this theory is going to work so very nice. But I digress..

I'm back to digging into that darned clay soil. Last year's experiments on victim plants taught me it is rich in organic matter. At least I've got that.

I will be using that foreign dude's method of enriching the soil (hugelkultur's). [is this double digging? I need to get that book.] Basically, each time I plant those corn, squash, beans or whatever. I'll prep the ground by digging down DEEP and burying layers of compost materials including logs much debri, etc. My neighbor with the empty lot? He's going to love me for it. I'll be using his "stuff" and cleaning up his lot LOL I really like this concept and, according to the dude it aids in moisture retention during drought seasons.

You might be a redneck if your husband hooks up an old engine to the tiller without regard to its size and ends up throwing dirt ten foot high. But that darn thing gets that clay up good!

bon

Bonnie,

Double-digging (see link below) is just digging out the earth basically two shovel-depths and enriching it. If you double dig two shovel depth's below the grade of the soil, and then put a raised bed 8-10" above grade level, you've done the equivalent of triple-digging. In the link below, there's a good step-by-step explanation of double digging.

When we first moved here, it was incredibly difficult to break up the red clay even with a powerful rear-tine tiller so we didn't double dig. It took all our energy, and a few broken shovels, spades and pickaxes/mattocks just to single dig. Drove me crazy! Over time as the top few inches of soil have improved, I've gone back and double dug the soil beneath a raised bed here and there. This year, the bed I double-dug in January was 35' long and 5' wide. It sure was a lot of digging interrupted by frequent rain and then long waits for the wet soil to dry out. I didn't think I'd ever finish it, but finally did. I added a whole lot of organic matter as I double dug so I hope it pays off in better performance by the bed this year. And, I should emphasize, the bed produced fine last year, but I'm never satisfied and always trying to improve the soil. Since "heat eats compost", soil amending and soil improvement never ends.

Hugelkultur is different in that it is mainly an attempt to get organic matter into the ground in large pieces to effect massive soil improvement once all that buried organic matter breaks down. It is a form of sheet composting, which my grandfather practiced as far back as my memory goes, which would be to the 1960s. In sheet composting, you dig a trench, fill it with compostables, and let them decompose underground, enriching the spot where they were placed. No digging after the initial burying of the material you want to compost, no turning, no checking the 'pile' (since there isn't one) to see if it is steaming hot, and certainly no jumping and running and screaming when you see a snake in the compost pile (since there isn't a pile). Hugelkultur just uses larger, woodier types of compostables. It is sort of killing two birds with one stone because instead of having to haul away or burn piles of tree limbs, brush, etc., you bury it and let it decompose, thereby improving your soil. It is a sustainable technique used in permaculture because, in theory, your inputs (the material you bury in the ground) are being recycled from one place on your property, or your neighbor's property, to another place and that's more sustainable than going to the store and buying peat moss that has traveled 1000 miles from its bog to your store. People who don't have a lot of woody waste material on their property, though, may have to "import" it from someplace nearby, but that's still more sustainable than buying bagged products from far away.

I haven't built many hugelkultur beds to directly plant into, but I do sort of build them in spots where we have rain runoff-type eroded areas. I pile up stuff in the area that is eroded and keep adding to the pile for several years. Once it is partly broken down, I pile dirt on top of all of it. Voila! A big old gully or drainage swale has disappeared. I use native soil to bury all the stuff, so native plants pop up from that top layer of soil once it is in place. By doing that, we've restored a once-eroded area and improved the soil there all at the same time. Since the soil has improved in texture and friability, water tends to soak in better instead of running off and carrying away top soil (or what passes for it here) with it. It is a long slow process but it works.

Ever since we moved here, I've been working to get the soil in my garden to be as rich and loamy as the soil in our woodland where the fallen leaves, tree limbs, bark, dead trees, dead parts of understory plants, dead insects, dead birds, animals and reptiles all just lie on the soil surface until they decompose. We still have dense red clay subsoil in the woodland, but it is buried beneath about 8 or 9" of woodland soil built through natural processes from the top down. Maybe one of these days I'll manage to build garden soil that comes close to being as wonderful as that woodland soil.

As for the willows, I wouldn't mind them if they wouldn't snap and drop limbs every time the wind blows. The older ones just seen to drop brittle limbs all the time. New ones sprout continuously. Willows are sort of like bamboo---once you've got them growing, you've got them forever.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Double Digging

Exactly, exactly, exactly! The woodland's soil is what I have in mind. Not unlike what my finished compost dirt looks like but more pliable and even richer. I know there's no perfection to stuff but if it works... do it! Like you, I don't think I'll be building 7 foot tall H beds but I can certainly do the smaller stuff here and there. Thanks for the input. It sounds like I'm headed in the right direction with the double digging.

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."
Helen Keller

bon

Bon,
I'm glad I wasn't taking a drink of coffee when I read the results of your husband souping up your rototiller!! Hilarious!

George

In Ohio we had a gorgeous and huge weeping willow in our yard. It didn't shed leaves, it shed limbs. Like Dawn says it is constant work. We left there to move to Oklahoma and bought a house with a willow tree in the front yard. We knew the house had a plumbing problem, so before me moved in we had the willow tree removed and dug up the lateral lines going to the septic tank. The roots went from the tree to the septic tank by traveling through the sewer pipe. The roots totally filled the pipe to the point we had to cut the pipe and start over with new lateral lines.

The guy on the backhoe that dug it all up said he always recommended that everyone plant a willow, because they kept him in the lateral line business. You are just asking for trouble if you plant a willow in your yard.

@George He walked in the house with dirt in his hair, his face, his shirt pockets and beamed with pride that it worked so well. Gawd.. too darned funny. Loving named Frankentiller.

@grandmom Thank you so much for that. Sounds to me my willow might be better off as bonsai!

When you moved into the house and got rid of the willow tree, how tall was it? Do you remember by chance?