Vegetable husbandry, succession gardening, and prayers for rain

The late corn that Bud and LJ and I planted is coming along, though getting a bit choked by it's overzealous bean sisters. It's raining a little today (HALLELUJAH!!!) and I'm hoping the rain will give the corn the boost it needs to outgrow the beans a little.

Since it's such a small patch of corn, we'll have to hand-pollinate at some point soon. I'm excited for our first adventure in vegetable husbandry/wifery, which is far less daunting than the livestock equivalent.

Meanwhile, we harvested a bunch of carrots and beets over the weekend (see below), some of which we enjoyed shredded last night in a delightful salad with white beans, wild rice, sunflower seeds, parsley, celery, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (plus salt and pepper for those of you who want to try this at home).



The rest of the beet and carrot harvest is either fermenting in one of the various crocks crowding our kitchen counters, or in cold storage (aka the fridge) to last, we hope, until the next round of roots are ready.

We're direct seeding carrots, beets, radishes, and mustards now for the fall--the photo below is C. mulching a carrot/radish bed we sowed on Saturday with heirloom French Breakfast Radish and Scarlet Nantes Carrot seeds.



The idea is that we'll keep sowing beets, carrots, and radishes every few weeks until the weather gets too cold--succession planting so that in theory we should have root crops to eat and share for a good while to come.

In the meantime, I am holding out hope for an long, steady downpour today (it's just a drizzle at this point) for our garden and all of the plants and animals, including we human animals, that are so desperate for rain after so many months of drought.

Let's have some RAIN!!!

Three Sisters

"A long time ago there were three sisters who lived together in a field. These sisters were quite different from one another in their size and way of dressing. The little sister was so young that she could only crawl at first, and she was dressed in green. The second sister wore a bright yellow dress, and she had a way of running off by herself when the sun shone and the soft wind blew in her face. The third was the eldest sister, standing always very straight and tall above the other sisters and trying to protect them. She wore a pale green shawl, and she had long, yellow hair that tossed about her head in the breeze. There was one way the sisters were all alike, though. They loved each other dearly, and they always stayed together. This made them very strong."

~Lois Thomas oral history. In: Indian Legends of Eastern Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Toronto (Ontario). Education Division, 1969.

Zephyr Squash

We planted the first of this year's "Three Sisters" beds -- a 27-foot bed of Cherokee Trail of Tears Black Beans and Zephyr summer squash (above) along with some winter squash (Waltham Butternut), sunflowers, and a couple of edible gourd varieties.

Prepping the first bed for the three sisters and their gourd cousins

The traditional three sisters, planted together, are corn, beans, and squash. All three have been grown in the Americas for thousands of years, and the three were often grown together in traditional Native American polyculture gardens.

Across North America from present-day Mexico to Canada, there were traditional agricultural practices centered around squash and her two sister staple crops. A practical and sophisticated example of low-impact, high-yield companion planting, three sisters plantings provided a nutritional complement for the peoples that grew them. Polyculture (the opposite of monoculture) prevented pest infestation and the symbiotic relationship between the three plants aided in the growth of all three, for higher yields and healthier crops.

In our garden, we substituted sunflowers for corn for a variation on the Three Sisters tradition --sunflowers are also indigenous to the Americas, and were grown as living trellises for beans in the same way that corn was. We're growing varieties with edible seeds, and hoping the flowers will help bring birds and beneficials to the garden. Gourds, which have a similar look and growing habit to squash, were not native to the Americas, but were grown in Europe for about 2,000 years before Columbus. The gourds are a bigger departure from the ancient 3 Sisters tradition, but the gourd varieties we're growing are really interesting heirlooms (Cucuzzi and Sweet Honey Sponge), so it was worth not being 3 Sisters fundamentalists.

Cherokee Trail of Tears Black Beans

Beans were domesticated in the Americas more than 3,500 years ago, the youngest of the famous "three sisters" cultivated by indigenous people on the American continents. The older sisters, corn and squash, have been cultivated for at least 5,500 years in the Americas.

Waltham Butternut Squash

Ancestors of today's pumpkins and sweet baking squashes, hard and hearty winter squashes, zucchinis, and crook- and straight-necked summer squashes were cultivated on North American soil at least a thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids were built.

With her two sisters beans and corn, wild and cultivated squash in endless variety was savored, nurtured, celebrated, and honored as "that which sustains" by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. For thousands of years before European colonization, the three sister plant spirits were cherished as green, growing relatives in the family of all living things. Sacred stories, symbols, art, and rituals surrounding the sisters were woven into the spiritual practices of many First Nation cultures.

In some versions of the creation story told by Iroquois peoples, the three sisters were daughters of the daughter of the first woman, Skywoman, who walked across the back of a great turtle, scattering seeds and roots, creating the earth. Other traditions honored a sacred site, a place then called Ogarechny Mountain, where legend held that beans, corn, and squash were first found growing, planted as a gift by a woman from the sky. Still other ancient tales traced the plants to three women bearing gifts from the south: the foods to sustain human life.

The Three Sisters were not only functional staple food crops--they were integral parts of a belief system that honored plants and animals as relatives and understood human beings as part of a community of life. For some accounts of traditional growing methods for the three sisters, there's a great book I'd recommend: A People's Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living: Health, Environment, Agriculture, Native Traditions edited by Gregory Cajete (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1999).