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.
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!
Two different sweetcorn varieties growing either side of the beans. This was a bad idea, they cross pollinated! The cobs were beautiful to look at but earthy in flavour, not sweet enough and the texture was a bit chewy! Not all of the cobs were effected and the other were really delicious. The yellow ‘Double Standard’ variety being our favourite. Next year we will stick to just the one!
At the top is Painted Mountain and at the bottom is a Double Standard Yellow, others 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 in til mid summer.
Next Spring we will be sticking to just one variety of sweetcorn to avoid cross pollination!
Return to The Edible Garden
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Autumn In the Polytunnel
The nights become chilly and the mornings frosty, the polytunnel has had another hot summer and is finally cooling down. Space is filling up with tender plants in containers and our fruit and veg growing in the raised beds are coming to an end and soon to be replaced with winter crops that are grown… Read more
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Polytunnel Progress: Building a Heated Seed Bed
Going into 2020 we decided that a heated seed bed inside the polytunnel would be amazing for starting seeds early in the year without having to sacrifice our indoor space! There are many plants that do not require such early start but we will be focusing on those such as Chilli Peppers and Sweet peppers… Read more
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Growing Dahlias from Seed and overwintering tubers
One of our latest plant obsessions is the Dahlia, since growing them from seed and realising just how easy it is to get many years out of these lovely plants. I first attempted these many years ago, with a tray of seed under my living room radiator. It was so successful it led me to… Read more
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2019 Growing: Chilli and Sweet Pepper Review
T’was a hot summer here in the south of England, and our first with the new polytunnel We couldn’t wait to see how our chilli peppers would grow in comparison to previous years being grown in the ground in the old greenhouse. This year we grew chillies in there, as well as in pots, and… Read more
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First Summer in the Polytunnel
2019 is our first summer having the Polytunnel and we’re sharing our successes and failures that came along with it. We have absolutely loved it and couldn’t have hoped for better results when it comes to our growing goals. We did come across some challenges including Managing the Environment. But we also learnt that we’re able… Read more
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Growing Summer Hanging Baskets
We’re sharing our experience from start to finish including which plants we used, compost, fertiliser and a review of the whole process. Including failures!
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First Spring In the Polytunnel
We have been busy for the last couple of months growing our seedlings indoors and transferring them to the tunnel in preparation for various growing projects.
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Installing the Polytunnels
Summer 2018 Before we went for it and installed the tunnels we did a lot of research and tried to avoid the common fails, but we still had some epic ones including ripping a hole in the plastic! Luckily for us we already had the steel hoops in the ground as it was used many… Read more
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First winter in the polytunnel
In summer 2018 we invested in two 22m long polytunnels which we use to over winter plants, start seedlings off and house young plants. Maintaining a constant temperature inside the tunnel is difficult as we currrently do not have any heating system in place. Ideas for next winter especially, we are considering an indoor compost… Read more
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Chilli and Sweet Pepper harvesting in November
Misty mornings and a continuous fire means winter is well on its way. This is our first winter on the land, and we have semi-prepared. November has been an interesting month in the garden, bringing us great crops! we harvested the remainder of our chilli and sweet pepper plants and had a huge amount of… Read more
Homegrown and Hopeful 