That would be somewhat similar to what is referred to as the three sisters, growing Corn, Beans, and Squash together.

I'm not at all familiar with soybean. Does it vine much? If it does not climb the cornstalks then it seems likely to get overly shaded, unless the corn is at very wide spacing.

This is a combination of 'sq. ft. gardening' and vertical gardening. kimmsr is refering to a strategy thought up a while back, but for me it didn't work that well in that everything was overrun by the squash and the squash was crowded too much.

Nevertheless in my raised beds I interplant a number of things, especially as one crop is winding down I have new bedding plants in the wings. Combining cool weather crops with warm weather crops works well that way.

Always fun to try. :)

Well Kimm: one of the sisters is going on vacation this Summer leaving the other 2 behind:)

Wish I had the ground to plant lots of different combos of cvs, spacings and planting dates.

The beans don't vine but depending on the cv they can form a pretty tall, (3+'), dense canopy. They are excellent biomass producers here even dry land. I usually end up with a canopy so dense nothing can grow under it, bye bye weeds! I run the tops through a shredder and dump the material back where it came from. The shredded green tops would be awesome for composting but, this old fart is too pooped out by the shredding to compost later. It makes its way back to the soil.

Growing the "three sisters" is reputed to be an ancient native American custom, the beans (a legume) provided Nitrogen for corn and squash while the corn gave the beans structure to climb on. The squash provided shade that kept unwanted plants from growing.
For many years now a variant of this has been used by growing corn and soybeans in alternate years, so there is no reason why growing them together would not work.
I included a link for those that do not know what the three sisters is.

Here is a link that might be useful: About the three sisters

Kimm: I can think of a few ways it wouldn't work at least

1). Plant the wrong cvs..

2). Get the spacing wrong of the corn and/or beans.

3). Get the planting date(s) wrong.

Modern bean varieties are inoculated prior to planting to get good N fixation, how did the aboriginals handle this? What kind of yields did they get? I suspect they did pretty good having worked on perfecting their growing systems for so long, doing the research.

The native Americans did not have access to, or use, the modern synthetics or practices that kill off the soil biota, so probably the bacteria that helped legumes fix Nitrogen were in the soil they planted in.

Nitrogen Fixing bacteria has always been present and exists in every soil, just like every other bacteria exists everywhere.

Bacteria that are able to find a host and grow do that very thing, those who do not, generally sporoform until habitat changes in their favor.

Human innoculation of the seed will be wasted if the soils are hostile to the target bacteria which is why healthy soil is so important. :)

I agree, in good active soil with high SOM the bacteria needed for legume will be present.

Myself and a friend have tried the three sister method many times in various configurations with mostly poor results (right here at first Pilgrim-contact land). We often wonder if the colonists who wrote about this method were not seeing it accurately. For example, important details may be missing from the anecdotes.

I wish they had had their iPhones with them and taken photosâ¦

I wonder, how the soil the Hopis first began the 3 sisters system had the needed N fixing bacteria in it? We're those not largely barren desert sands when they first got there? Obviously, they had to start form scratch with sandy soils with little to no OM let alone host specific N fixing bacteria. Yes, the soil may have been, "healthy" for the native flora but corn, beans and squash, hmmm.

Mike, perhaps the climate was wetter and thus the soil a bit more lively? And surely they used enormous spacing so as to allow each plant a huge area to draw moisture and nutrients such as N.

Yep, each growing system requires its own optimum plant spacing. Don't know if the area was wetter, cooler or warmer back then.

I'm guessing a lot of N was obtained from human urine in past civilizations.

Lloyd

"Myself and a friend have tried the three sister method many times in various configurations with mostly poor results (right here at first Pilgrim-contact land). We often wonder if the colonists who wrote about this method were not seeing it accurately. For example, important details may be missing from the anecdotes.

If you want to do this, you have to use the original varieties and the original spacing. Modern varieties are too heavy-bearing and too vigorous. Your squash smothers the corn, the corn is so high it falls over, and the beans cover the field with a mini-jungle.

Spacing was wide ... a few stalks in a cluster, then several feet for the squash and beans before the next cluster of stalks.

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The modern Mexican ejido variant on this is to grow strips of corn, strips of beans (rotating positions yearly) with squash along the edges and fences.

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Traditional Hopi corn field ... notice the height of the plants and the spacing. You get one ear per stalk, maybe two. Yield per acre is very small, but they were subsistence farmers.

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Below is a link to how the Hidatsa Indians planted. Very informative. The plants were spaced much farther apart than people realize.

Rodney

Here is a link that might be useful: Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

I grow Shepherdia bushes, (buffalo berry) a native of northern NM/AZ thats a non-legume nitrogen fixer. Also yields a surprising amount of edible tiny red fruit, which I suspect might be a fairly high on the nutrient levels. Makes good jelly.

Anyway, an interesting speculation re other ways of getting nitrogen in the high desert environment.

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I've been reading that Hidatsa Indians link that was posted for a couple hours now. Great stuff.

Here's a link to a pdf version of the original 1917 release from archive.org

https://archive.org/download/cu31924073970703/cu31924073970703.pdf

Here is a link that might be useful: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians

Lazy, I think that is correct, but sussing it out is not easy.

In fact we have used the original variety for this area: Narraganset Flint (also called rhode island white-cap). It is unclear to me what the original phaseolus may have been, or the squash, but there are plenty of existing possibilities. Another thing frequently ignored is that insect pest-pressure is much different now - at least in this region - than it would have been then. Much greater now, with imported pests present of corn and beans and maybe squash as well. Also their soils would have had better health due to their ability to constantly move their gardens around. Yes, they must have used very wide spacing and yields per-plant must have been low.

If I had the whole county to choose from that's just what I would do too.

Another feature of the "three sisters" method that escapes modern gardeners: it was flint corn, winter squash and winter beans. All of it harvested when the plants were at the end of the growing season.

Not sweet corn, green pole beans and summer squash, where you need to get in and harvest daily.

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BTW, Hopis did not use the "three sisters" method. Their squash was grown elsewhere, as were the beans ... areas of more water.

Lucky for me I have a very large selection of soybean. and sweetcorn cvs to e from all with their own characteristics. I also don't have to do decades of research to figure out how they likely will perform in my srea except in my chosen growing system. Geez, I just learned that soybeans are photoperiod sensitive and grouped as such. Where you live, north or south, has a very significant influence on cv selection. The sweetcorn should be easier.

At this point I'm thinking not interplanting but just plant half of the plot with corn first , then beans then the cover crop in mid September On the other half, beans, corn, cover.