This weekend we harvested all that remained in our three sisters garden. The boys and I dug out the ten-by-ten plot and planted it at the beginning of May on a bit of a whim, and I wrote about our adventures in polyculture in June when it was in its infancy.
Since then we watched a few heirloom corn plants shoot toward the sky. Spotted rattlesnake beans twisted up their hardy stocks, and half a dozen varieties of spiky squash plants covered the ground beneath them. The soil in our plot wasn’t great, but we harvested loads of zucchini and summer squash and at least a dozen winter squash. We ate many rounds of green rattlesnake beans and let the rest dry on the vine for cooking beans.
We eat a lot of beans around here, and it was an educational process to grow them ourselves. Beans are such a humble and inexpensive food; it’s easy to take them for granted. But once you spend an afternoon hunched over a bowl shelling them, you’re less likely to do that.
What a thrill it’s been to watch what was a patch of weeds last April transform into a robust and beautiful garden. And because beans fix nitrogen in the soil, we’ll hopefully see even bigger harvests in our plot in future years. I definitely understand why this sisterly trio has such a rich history in the Americas.
What have you been harvesting this fall? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
A strange year garden-wise. Easy-to-grow standards like broccoli and kale were eaten by rabbits. Even our zucchini struggled to produce. We had bumper crops of garlic, tomatillas, tomatoes, and Jerusalem artichokes. And we acquired a Toulouse goose (an actual rescue goose) that has given us a harvest of goose-related stories. The most notable is that our dear goose has fallen in love….with my car. Here’s that story:
http://bitofearthfarm.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/goose-and-honda-a-love-story/
Oh goodness, what a strange and wonderful story! A harvest of goose-related stories sounds like a bountiful harvest indeed.
I’ve been planting fava beans in October here in Northern California for probably the last seven years. After the second year of bountiful fresh and dry fava bean harvests, someone asked me if I was saving some of my lovely dried fava beans to plant as my next crop. I was stunned. It had not occurred to me that the dried beans that I had carefully collected to soak and cook could also be used as seeds for my next planting (duh!). I hope that you are able to save some of your beans as seeds for your next year’s garden? It’s so much fun to plant your very own seeds from generations of your very own plants from your very own garden.
I also meant to say thanks so much for writing about your garden and your experience growing the three sisters. How much fun.
Thanks, Gloria! Yes, I’m saving some. I’ve never saved seeds, but I’m super excited to experiment this year. I know what you mean about not realizing what we eat can also be put in the ground to grow more. I’m just making these connections too, and wow, what a magical realization! It definitely shows you how alive our food is. We’re cooking up our very first pot of homegrown beans today, and we can’t wait to try them!
Here in the Southern hemisphere (Melbourne, southern Australia) the spring has brought an abundance of dwarf french carrots, some slow growing but tasty spring cos lettuce generated from our year-on-year self seeding process, lashings of dill (and fish dishes to go with it plus lots of dill experimentation) and a weekly ritual of lemon and lime butter making (and sharing) due to the trees hanging heavy with lemons.
love your multicolored peppers.