The three sisters beside the banana trees!
We Trialled this method and had some interesting results!
The three sisters is a traditional method of companion planting three plants: climbing beans, corn and squash together in the same growing area.
Rainbow Fountain Sweetcorn, Gourds undernearth, Runner Beans and Chereokee French Beans and Double Standard Sweetcorn
The sweetcorn blocks were separated by beans on a bamboo structure in between, but it wasn’t enough distance as some of them were cross pollinated. These ones tasted more earthy and the texture was a bit chewy! Next year we will plant them completely separate – one patch in the greenhouse, one patch in the polytunnel and see what happens.
The gourd grew over everything and we had to hack it back heavily but it came back for vengeance and grew out of the greenhouse instead!
The sweetcorn grew brilliantly, with half a dozen or so cobs on each, although they did look like they were struggling a bit towards the end, amongst the overgrown gourd and beans!
We had a nice crop from the Double Standard Yellow and the Painted Mountainvarieties we grew, we preferred the Yellow one for taste and performance all round, and are growing it again this year!
At the top is Painted Mountain and at the bottom is a the sweet tasty Double Standard, others appear cross pollinated!
The beans eventually grew massively over the bamboo setup, and also made it up some of the sweetcorn. The squash plants started okay but failed mainly because I didn’t put them into until mid summer.
The blocks were separated by beans on a bamboo structure in between, but it wasn’t enough distance as some of them were cross pollinated. These ones tasted more earthy and the texture was a bit chewy!
This Spring we will be sticking to just one variety to avoid cross pollination!
Head to our blog: Seeds and Young Plants in the Polytunnel to see how our latest seedlings are growing
