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Post by daylilydude on Dec 24, 2010 0:21:00 GMT -5
Can someone explain this type of gardening? Anyone here grow their garden like this?
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Post by coppice on Dec 24, 2010 10:15:32 GMT -5
Three sisters is old. Old technology and old cultivars. If you were left with only a digging stick and are willing to live on hominy, dried beans, and squash. You could live. Missisipian culture people did just that and filled a lot of central USA till smallpox killed most of them...
I've not found suitable substitutions of modern more desirable cultivars to fully replicate this with modern corns.
That said pole beans can successfuly climb some of the more lodge resistant corns while being shaded by a squash.
My problem is I don't really like feild corn at first milk, and like hominy not at all.
Three sisters will make an impenatratable thicket and if planted on a feild that has been adaquately mulched with yard waste in the fall should be able to be kept in cultivation for many years.
Post WTSHTF, we might all wish we had a feild planted this-a-way.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2010 20:54:30 GMT -5
A lot about the three sisters technique has become "larger than life". The standard story is that squash shades weeds, corn supports beans, and beans provide nitrogen for sustainable agriculture. The truth is 1) The three crops provide a complete nuitrition diet so that the Plains Indian three sisters culture of the 18th century were the tallest-healthiest people on earth at the time. researchnews.osu.edu/archive/tallind.htm2) Corn supported the beans, but the squash may be planted in a different part of the field by itself to get more sun (Plains tribes)(eastern woodlands tribes and white settlers may have interplanted) 3) Beans are very poor nitrogen fixers, so they didn't help the soil. Native Americans rotated fields (2-3 years planting followed by abandonment (fallow) to let nitrogen build back up. The first Europeans (Jamestown colony) encounted open/cleared woodlands that were basically fallow gardens/fields that were recovering at the time. The most complete record we have of this is type of gardening is "Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians" Which can be downloaded as a free PDF on google books and some other sites. It is also for sale as Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden For other aspects of Hidatsa life see "Horse and Dog Culture of the Hidatsa Indians" You can still grow heirloom Hidatsa/Mandan/Arikara corn and bean varieties. The squash originating from these tribes have been "improved" in or all some cases (mandan, arikara, and lakota squashes). Great northern beans also came from these tribes. Its more difficult to find varieties with a direct trace to the eastern tribes.
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rintintin
Pro Member
Posts: 150
Joined: December 2010
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Post by rintintin on Dec 24, 2010 21:33:47 GMT -5
Slash & burn was also a technique of several tribes. Not for agricultural purposes, but as a means of eliminating a crop relied upon by a conflicting tribe. If the entire valley was now devoid of fruit trees, the other tribe would have no reason to migrate through that region next autumn. Do not for a moment believe that "white man" has a monopoly on greed.
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Post by coppice on Dec 24, 2010 22:34:15 GMT -5
Or that white men had a monopoly of not getting along with their neighbors.
As citation: Baton Rouge--red stick a no-pass boundary.
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Post by coppice on Dec 24, 2010 23:38:34 GMT -5
I did do one run of three years on one bed, trying different cultivars of beans corn squash. fed those beds nothing but an autumnal mulch of leaves. Infertility wasn't what made me give up. Not finding a bean that would not lodge corn did.
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