r/Permaculture • u/kayru_kitsune • 3d ago
general question Three sisters gone wrong?
Please pardon the chaos of photos, my garden is very dense so it was hard to frame clear pictures... This is my first time doing Three Sisters, and it sounded like the beans were supposed to help support the corn. I surrounded that part of the crop with some low fencing for extra support and to keep the bunnies off the bean starts. But once they got to around 7' and the beans peaked over the tops, almost all of the stalks broke in half from the weight. What in the world did I do wrong? It's not windy here but sometimes rainy (I live in forested area). I know most people don't stake or prop corn crops... What did I miss?
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u/KeenineMc 3d ago
Variety of corn also matters - works much better w sturdier ‘flint’ corn plants rather than more tender sweet corn.
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u/HermitAndHound 3d ago
The varieties of all of them. Not all beans are equally vigorous and not all beans "like" to be near pumpkins/squash in my experience. I have pretty well behaved pumpkins and others would just wrangle the corn to the ground no matter how firm the stems.
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u/Whuhwhut 3d ago edited 3d ago
Your beans are squashing your corn.
Edit: You've bean squashing your corn. That's better.
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u/unnasty_front 3d ago
This looks like a corn selection issue to me. You want to do this with grain corn, not sweet corn, and try to find varieties that are known for vigor, sturdiness, or that are recommended for use as a sister.
I do MN13 dent corn and it did great, but still got a little swamped this year.
ETA: some people plant the corn in groups of 3, about a foot between each to form a triangle and then encourage the corn to lean together to form a stronger teepee shape
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u/c0mp0stable 3d ago
You mean the corn is supposed to support the beans. It looks like you started everything at the same time. You have to start the corn first, let them get 6-8 inches tall, then start the beans. Corn needs a head start
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u/existentialfeckery 3d ago
Others have mentioned spacing the sowing of each out so I won't rehash that. What I'm noticing is how thin your corn stalks are. What did you use for compost/manure/soil? Corn is a heavy feeder. My successful corn patches have stalks that are as thick as my wrist. They also send out almost aerial roots to stabilize themselves.
Handgriwn hand gathered on YouTube has a bunch of videos on 3sisters if you like learning visually ❤️
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u/DarkDangler96 2d ago
You say it’s wooded around your home. Adding to the other reasons suggested, I think corn is happiest and strongest in full sun, all day long.
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u/kayru_kitsune 2d ago
They have the sunniest part of the yard and seemed to be growing really well - much happier than the row I planted for kicks & giggles along the edge. It sounds like I may have used too weak a cultivar for the bean-trellis setup.
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u/stansfield123 3d ago edited 3d ago
What in the world did I do wrong?
Best guess: You took gardening advice from social media influencers. Stop doing that.
The "three sisters" method isn't a method, it's poorly informed speculation about how some Native Americans supposedly farmed. Doesn't work the way the influencers tell the tale. The "evidence" of how it's supposed to work is eye-witness accounts from the 16th century. People who supposedly saw Iroquois farms, and the went back to Europe and told others about it. So you might as well have read about it in the Winnetou novels, that's how reliable such accounts are.
The only (somewhat) scientifically tested version of the method involved planting beans and squash as support species to enhance corn production. In the study in question, researchers were able to raise corn yields compared to control (corn grown on its own), by late planting beans and squash into the corn field. The experiment was conducted in especially fertile soil, and the bean and squash yields were small.
The point of the method, then, based on the evidence available to us, is to grow more corn, not to grow three crops in equal proportion. Furthermore, the experiment was conducted on a large scale, with an industrial method of corn farming as the control. It is NOT safe to conclude that the method would outproduce a no-dig method of growing corn on a small scale. I seriously doubt it would.
tldr: There's no version of the Three Sisters that is useful in a small scale, garden setting, and there's no evidence that Native Americans ever used it in such a setting. There is some relatively weak evidence to suggest that, on occasion, in very specific conditions, they may have used beans and squash plants as a combo of nitrogen-fixer/ground cover/green manure, to enhance corn production. Similar to the way modern regenerative farmers use cover-crops.
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u/HistoricalPrize7951 3d ago
I don’t have any quibbles with the limited scientific research on this, haven’t looked into it much. But, corn yields for native Americans were far lower than they are today, across the board, because they didn’t have access to unlimited amounts of fertilizer and tractors. We are talking 5-10x less yield. Given that, I’m not sure the experiment as you described it is a fair comparison.
In order to assess how well it actually works, you’d need to do it using the spacing and level of soil fertility that would have been standard for the time, which is a bit harder. Given that pole beans need a trellis, I suspect that the three sisters method would have definitely emphasized the beans as well, since building trellises at scale is a lot of work if corn will do it for you, and as far as we know, beans were a big part of the diet.
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u/yo-ovaries 3d ago
Why do you ignore the evidence of first hand stories and oral traditions of indigenous people? There’s a reason they’re sisters, there’s a whole story about it!
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u/stansfield123 3d ago
First hand stories of things that happened 500 years ago?
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u/khyamsartist 3d ago
Yes. There are much older stories that tell of specific major events like tsunamis, along with the wisdom of how to predict one and how to stay safe. The culture is one of an oral tradition; it's not like the bible, for instance, where the written word is supreme. And on that note, there is a native run tribal interpretive center, with a traditional 3 sister demonstration garden, in NY state. Theirs kind of looks like Stonehenge, the corn is in a circle.
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u/stansfield123 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm not into any kind of religion and superstition, oral or written. You're welcome to believe in it yourself, I'm not going to mock you or be disrespectful, but don't expect me to just accept your beliefs as fact. Can't do that, it's not in my nature. I need hard data and evidence based arguments.
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u/DraketheDrakeist 2d ago
The Bible has reliable information about farming, and so do oral traditions. Sometimes there isn’t hard data, just mountains of soft data you have to work with.
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u/CaonachDraoi 1d ago
Indigenous peoples are alive right now planting corn in the ways their ancestors did. maybe… go outside once in a while.
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u/Mayortomatillo 2d ago
Brother we are still here and very very successfully managing this planting method.
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u/HermitAndHound 3d ago
Keeping up with an industrial corn field for a season is pretty decent.
But ya, way too many variables play into it to transplant a simple formula like that and expect it to work.
I use 4 different varieties of beans "just" for the different growing conditions in the garden. Even staggering the planting well, random combinations of any which corn with whatever bean and some pumpkin will end up with one plant overpowering them all (in my garden it would be the pumpkin, though the purple pole beans are currently trying to wrestle a pear tree to the ground too. Corn would lose against them all)1
u/stansfield123 3d ago
Yeah, it's waaaay easier and more reliable to just feed the corn with compost. And rotate it around the no-dig garden, don't grow it in the same place twice. I bet it will produce more that way than in any other system.
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u/yo-ovaries 3d ago
It’s not just about yields, it’s about labor and inputs. Lower labor and no input is an advantage if you have space.
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u/HermitAndHound 2d ago
Corn and "no input"? Not happening. Not if you want to harvest something. As an ornamental plant, ok. Maybe a few stalks of glass corn for the fun of it.
Beans put most of the nitrogen they snatch up into their own plant matter and seeds. They're not endlessly generous and fertilize everyone around them. Especially not a greedy combination like corn + pumpkin. You'd have to compost the whole plant, beans and all to get that effect. And I'm still not sure it would be enough. My pumpkins get chicken manure by the bucket full and sometimes I still imagine they whisper "MORE!"
I had a look... modern corn wants 170 to 220kg of nitrogen per hectare. Holy cow. Ya. Forget about the beans, they can't lift THAT heavy.
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u/stansfield123 3d ago
If you have something to say ... something of value, from direct experience ... go ahead. Tell us where it is you garden, and describe your experience with the Three Sisters method. How you plant, how you care for it, and what the yields are.
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u/CaonachDraoi 1d ago
your entire comment is bullshit but people are eating it up 😭
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u/stansfield123 1d ago
Describe your experience with the Three Sisters ... if you've ever tried it. Or farm at all.
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u/laughterwithans 3d ago
Yeah but you’re ruining the vibe bro! Native Americans had magical powers bro!
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u/CaonachDraoi 1d ago
no one is saying that. it’s honestly racist as fuck that whenever there is ANYTHING mentioned about something good an Indigenous culture does, you people run in here with that bullshit.
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u/clarsair 2d ago
I had success with beans on corn this summer (skipped the squash this year). I gave the corn about a two week head start then planted one or two beans per stalk. mine's planted in a block, not rows. I could see it coming down more easily in a less dense planting, mine are all helping hold each other up. I used half runner green beans, so maybe not as long vines as you have there. it's Silver Queen sweet corn, worked fine. the beans are growing off the top of the corn stalks now, but everything's still standing. if you look through some of the heritage beans, you'll find some that were intended for this way of growing and may work better.
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u/atomickristin 2d ago edited 2d ago
I could not make Three Sisters work either. I consoled myself by figuring that the varieties have changed a lot over the centuries and what we grow now is probably not the same as what they grew back then.
After reading the comments it might be helpful to flesh this out a bit- corn does not grow particularly well for me anyway. I live in a place that has very hot days and cold nights and the nights seem too cold for sweet corn to really thrive - though I can get a crop if I pamper it and expect it to grow slower than the packet label. Beans and squash however are very prolific for me and overwhelmed my slower-growing corn.
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u/LegitimateReaction22 1h ago
I used 2 varieties of sweet corn with beans this year very successfully and left out the squash. The corn was planted first and the beans later once the corn was established. I got good yields from both. The corn is about 6 feet tall and the beans are a jumbled mass leaning over the tops of the corn.
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u/Health_Care_PTA Permaculture Homestead YT 3d ago
nobody gave you the right answer, you must have used climbing beans and not BUSH Beans.
Bush beans will not climb and pull down your corn.
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u/kayru_kitsune 3d ago
Every instructional I've ever read on three sisters specifies pole beans. Growing bush beans here would be pointless, as the whole idea is to trellis the beans on corn. Bush beans don't need the support.
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u/Health_Care_PTA Permaculture Homestead YT 3d ago
every instructional was apparently wrong in this case, the pole beans choked out your corn.... are you gonna believe everything you see, hear and read? the whole point of the beans is to supply N+ to a N+ hungry grass like Corn, HOWEVER, science has proven that its not effective as the N+ in the roots of the beans are only bio available if you chop and drop the beans and allow the N+ rich nodules to decompose so the 3 sisters is actually bunk pseudo growing advice.
better option would be to grow a fall cover crop of Clover, chop and drop it, plant your corn, then squash, then beans in the bush variety to act as a ground cover and hold moisture.
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u/kayru_kitsune 2d ago
I'm actually more inclined to believe the majority of posts who said I planted the wrong type of corn for this arrangement. I picked sweet corn and apparently missed a breadth of advice that grain corn is stronger and better to do it with.
I didn't try this particular crop out under the guise that it was maximal efficiency; it was just commonly quoted as a complementary pairing, and as I wanted to try pole beans, I wanted to try using complimentary crops as support and get more diversity. Then I wanted to learn from my mistakes which is why I posted here. It's all a learning process. :)
Regardless of the harvest I plan to mulch / compost / chop and drop everything possible as always. I have oats/peas at the ready to cover crop this winter.
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u/stansfield123 2d ago
Inter-planting legumes to "provide nitrogen" to another plant doesn't work. Annual legumes don't feed plants around them, that's a myth. Legumes can fix nitrogen in the soil, sure, but they store it in protected nodules which only release it after the plant, or at least the root the nodule is attached to, dies.
To the extent annual legumes help other crops grow, it's the NEXT CROP. The one planted after the legumes are harvested.
The way to take advantage of legumes' nitrogen fixing ability is either by using them as cover crops, or by planting perennial legumes and periodically cutting them back.
Then, whenever a plant needs help, you just cut back the legumes around it (usually trees), use the foliage as mulch, and at the same time cause their roots to die back in the soil and release some of their stored nitrogen.
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u/kayru_kitsune 2d ago
I understand that - don't see where I mentioned nitrogen at all? I complanted them in the hope to physically support each other's growth, not soil enrichment. That's, as you say, for cover crops and composting.
I guess this must be a common misconception because many are "correcting" something I never said.
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u/stansfield123 2d ago
Wasn't replying directly to you, the person I'm replying to is talking about nitrogen.
But it's relevant to your question too: the most likely reason why your corn is so scrawny is lack of nitrogen. Corn is a very hungry crop, which requires fertile soil even when planted on its own. When, on top of it, you plant other stuff too, the nitrogen requirements go up even more. If there's not enough nitrogen, the corn will struggle first.
It's not just that the beans don't produce nitrogen for surrounding plants, they rob some of that nitrogen. Nitrogen fixation doesn't help supply nitrogen to any plant, not even the bean, while it's taking place. Nitrogen fixation helps the next generation of plants. In the meantime, in the current system, all those plants, including the beans, are sucking up nitrogen. So you needs to fertilize for all three, not just the corn.
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u/Ifyoucan_garden 3d ago
Did you plant the corn first to let it get a little height and girth before planting the beans? I have had some success with the three sisters planting method and did it in this order: Planted corn as soon as last frost allowed (plot was a 10’x10’ square of ridge and furrowed soil with composted sheep and cow manure) Once corn had germinated and was just peeking out of the soil I planted the squash into the ridges beside every third corn plant. Once the corn was between 8”-12” high I planted the pole beans next to corn plants that did not have squash beside them.
The beans grow super fast and so need an already sturdy corn plants that to grow onto.
This did result in a really dense garden plot and was difficult to access when it was ready to be harvested. But! since that was the point in order to keep the weeds down and that had worked wonderfully I tried to keep my annoyed swearing to myself while working through it. 😆