Updates on my Sisters Garden

[digitS']

I'm enjoying green beans from the Sisters Garden for lunch today - Cascade Giants. DW was able to squeeze into the garden and fish a few beans out. I think I'll leave the rest to dry for seed, using some for a pot of bean soup sometime this winter .

Here is a picture of the west end of that little garden:


You can click the photo to go back to that original thread on the Sisters.

The Rock Star pumpkin vines have produced 6 fruits. They aren't as large as they'd have been if the vines had been growing by themselves, I suppose. Still, they've done well. The Buttercup squash is also maturing a crop and, for some reason, I seem to have a vine producing blonde fruit in there! It may be a Cha Cha Kabocha squash but either way, the fruit is the wrong color!

The Painted Mountain corn IS smaller than I had expected and experienced a few years ago. Some of the pole beans ignored my poles and climbed on the corn. It got so that I couldn't get in there to try to convince the bean vines to stay on the poles so one corn plant, at least, has bent way over with the beans' weight. If I stay with Painted Mountain, I think I'll use a half-runner bean next year.

Weeds? There just about are none! Between the pumpkin and squash covering the ground, the corn growing above and the beans filling all available space between - virtually no sun can reach a weed.

The sweet corn elsewhere has just now matured! (I had some Kandy King last week and SugarSnow over the weekend. Bodacious and Sugar Buns will be next! ) The Painted Mountain is probably ahead of the sweet corn. If there was a frost next week, I suspect that the harvested ears would look just fine. They don't look too big, however. I'm still at a loss as to why PM grew so large the last time I had it - supposedly, beyond what it was designed for . . .

Anyway, I think I will be happy with how things turn out with this Fall Harvest approach to raising a Sisters Garden .

Steve

 

[lesa]

That looks great! Amazing how that plant material discourages weeds! So, no vine borers in your neck of the woods??

 

[digitS']

. . . So, no vine borers in your neck of the woods??

Sshhhhhhhh . . . .



S'

 

[Southern Gardener]

That is a beautiful weed-free picture!!

 

[digitS']

This image doesn't really have anything to do with my Sisters Garden. Just that if you stayed on the road that passes thru that canyon for a few hundred miles, you'd arrive in my part of the world.



And, I needed something to link to some Native American Flute music . . .

If you click on the picture, you can listen .

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Steve, everything looks so healthy. Was it successful enough that you will be doing it next year?

Mary

 

[digitS']

Looks healthy as compared to that dry, barren canyon, Mary? Actually, that canyon may be healthy too, just in a different sort of a way .

Growing them again next year? Probably. I will likely continue to grow a few pumpkins for Halloween and not having winter squash in the garden is out of the question.

There has only been one season before that I've had ornamental corn, that I can remember. I'll think of it as ornamental corn until I can try Seedcorn's method of soaking the seed, running it thru the food processor, then making corn bread! I hope that works for me .

The match of pole bean variety and corn variety didn't work. If'n Imma gonna set up teepees, I don't need to plant the beans in the corn. There are half-runner beans, however. I once grew Pinto and they were like that. I don't want bush beans in there - that won't work.

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Will you get enough beans if you use corn for the teepees? Teepees don't give you anything while corn does.

Mary

 

[digitS']

I'll really need to put a value on corn allowed to fully-mature. And, that's true with the beans, too.

The problem I had years ago with a Sisters Garden was that the pole beans smothered the sweet corn, yes. But, getting in to pick the snap beans OR the sweet corn was very difficult. Further, it was all I could do not to step on the squash in the attempt!

Maybe, if I just give everything more room . . . but, that's going the "row crop" direction. I like to grow plants together and don't much like the looks of barren soil during the growing season. (You can understand, right ?) Part of my growth as a gardener has been trying to answer the question -- what can I plant together?!

There have been many years when I have had just about unlimited garden space. So what?! If'n I wanted to stay in farming, I guess I could of but gardening is so much more of what I have been about. Someday, they may find me in that Sisters Garden . . . covered up by the vines, resting.

Steve

 

[chills]

So fabulous! Thanks for sharing the update, now I know it can be done. I failed pretty bad at my first attempt, but learned a few things to try differently next year. Everything in your photo is so full and green, looks great!