Three Sisters

[glallotments]

I'm thinking of trying out the three sisters method of growing runner beans, sweet corn and squash together in a bed.

Maybe I am being untrusting but I am concerned that to grow runner beans up my sweet corn plants may damage the sweet corn so I am tempted to cheat and just grow the beans up canes. The sweet corn varieties that we have grown just don't seem sturdy enough to support beans at least not at the time the bean will be planted. Do you think the sweet corn used in the three sisters is a larger more commercially grown variety?

Has anyone tried out this method?

[Primrose]

Like you, I can't envisage that the sweet corn stalks would grow anywhere near tall enough to support the climbing beans. What little sweet corn I grow is never more than about four feet high whereas my climbing beans, both French & Runner always disappear over the top of their 6 foot poles. Admittedly when you see large fields of sweet corn it often seems to grow higher than this but this may possibly be because there is so much of it that in bulk each stalk offers its neighbours some protection from the wind & other elements, and thus allows it to grow a little higher. Also I can envisage that the large squash leaves, in the early days, would completely shade out the sweet corn unless it had already started to grow above the normal height of squash leaves. I have in the past grown squash at the base of my climbing beans. Apart from the fact that the squash swamped all my other low growing plants nearby such as lettuces & beetroots, they did successfully shade the roots of the beans and keep the moisture in the soil which benefits them in hot summers.

[alan refail]

Hi GL Allotments

The corn is unlikely to be high enough, as you say. Runner beans are far too vigorous. On the whole, it's a good idea, but is likely to have limited success. Have a look at this thread from a couple of years ago.

[PLUMPUDDING]

Our garden varieties of sweetcorn are much too small to grow beans up, but I've grown pumpkins and squashes between the sweetcorn and the beans on wigwams in the same bed and they look very nice and all get on with each other very well. I grow the sweetcorn in modules indoors so it has a good root system and quickly grows above the squashes. Just don't plant things too close together if you try it, you get far fewer pests and diseases if there is room for good air circulation.

[Tony Hague]

I think one thing that gets overlooked is that where this technique was used by native Americans, the beans and maize would both be drying types for storage. They would be left to do their own thing until the lot would be harvested together in autumn, so there was no problem trying to harvest one thing without damaging the other.

Last year I grew all three together in a bed, but used canes for the beans. I like the idea of letting the squash scramble around underneath the corn and beans. They smothered weeds even better than potatoes, IMHO. This year I plan to have one bed with squashes and beans (with canes) and one with squashes and sweetcorn.

[Gracie]

I run a school veg garden as well my own and last year the head made me do a three sisters bed, its great in theory but the corn does not grow quick enough to support the beans and as already been said it wont be tall enough. I ended up putting canes in, which defeated the object really. All three veg worked well in the same plot they like the same conditions but canes are needed for the beans.
regards Gracie

[Nature's Babe]

Runners outgrow even the tallest canes in my garden too, I was thinking of trying french or climbing borlotti this year with the sweetcorn and squash next year, and yes it does take a bit of organising, Victoriana Nursery Garden give a detailed plan for 3 sisters on their website, the sweetcorn need to get away first, I agree, if you try planting them all together at the same time it doesn't work, you just get a jumbled mess.

[alan refail]

Runners outgrow even the tallest canes in my garden too, I was thinking of trying french or climbing borlotti this year with the sweetcorn and squash next year, and yes it does take a bit of organising, Victoriana Nursery Garden give a detailed plan for 3 sisters on their website, the sweetcorn need to get away first, I agree, if you try planting them all together at the same time it doesn't work, you just get a jumbled mess.

You might just get away with climbing French beans if you plant a really tall (i.e. six foot) corn. Staying with the native American theme, Cherokee Trail of Tears are not too heavy. Climbing borlotti, on the other hand, are grown for the mature pods, which will be very much heavier. Since they are ready late-September/October harvesting the corn cobs will be very difficult and probably damaging to the borlotti.

[Johnboy]

I am begining to think that this thread is turning out to be an exercise in proving that the improbable is possible but is it really worthwhile?
Lets face it is there a real need for 'The Three Sisters Method' to be used? Certainly let your Squash meander through the base of the Sweet Corn just so long as they are not planted in the same soil, where they would have to compete for nutrition and any Beans to my way of thinking are a plant too far because they become an encumbrance. My thoughts are that you are trying to get a quart into a pint pot and thereby totally exhausting the soil every scrap of nutrition if you try all three in the same bed which is certainly not the best thing to do.
I suspect that all you manage to achieve is to get three mediocre crops!
JB.