Three Sisters Garden: Corn, Beans, and Squash
It's really feeling like the middle of summer. Actually with our absolutely divine weather it's feeling like late August. This past week has been a fairly lazy week in the garden. It's been a nice week. It's nice to just enjoy the garden and all the hard work that's gone into it. I've enjoyed just putzing in the garden, harvesting zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, a few cherry tomatoes, scallions, basil, parsley, chard, pulling weeds here and there, mulching, giving fish emulsion drinks to tomatoes and flowers, replanting cukes, carrots, lettuce, radishes, spinach, dill. As I've pulled up spent plants I re-dig the area, re-compost, and replant. I'm thinking that I'm getting close to the end of replanting. I will continue for another 2 weeks and then that will be just about it. Although now that I have a small cold frame I'm going to try some lettuce, spinach, and radishes under that well into the Fall. Speaking of radishes, I had to replant them again even though I did that about 2 weeks ago. Flea beetles ate them right up. I was surprised by that as I thought of Flea beetles as a cool season pest. So anyway, I replanted and this time covered the radish row with a row cover. That should keep the buggers at bay.
I sent some photos of my tomato plants to Caragh from County Extension. She wrote back saying that my tomatoes may have a magnesium deficiency. She recommended sprinkling Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, around the base of each plant. Interesting! So I did that. I don't know if it's my imagination but the rolling of the leaves that concerned me has definitely relaxed! Amazing! I also gave each of my tomato plants a heavy drink of a fish emulsion tea. Basically it's just water with some liquid fish emulsion added to it. I then mulched each plant again with some of my GGS (Great Goat Manure). They are looking good! And with this dry weather I think we may have tomatoes this year! Yeah!!! Think Homer Simpsom saying, "Ummm...bruchetta..."
Two plants that I'm watching carefully and babying are watermelon and cantaloupe. I haven't tried these in years as I never had luck with either one of them. The plants are looking great, full of flowers, but not a fruit in sight. Hummm :(. I'm not sure if they were to develop a fruit now if it would ripen in time. We'll see how it goes.
Made quite a few zucchini dishes this past week, enjoyed cucumbers in dill vinegar, and made the most amazing blueberry pie! It was an experiment. An Italian open pie on a butter crust. As it cooled I went for a walk. When I came back it was 1/2 gone! :) I guess it was a hit. I didn't get a photo. But I'm going to make it again with a young woman who I'm tutoring and I'll be sure to get a photo then and post it. I also made dilly beans. I have step by step instructions in a post from last year. Just type "dilly beans" into the search and it'll bring you to an August post. I think it was August 2nd. This week was also a great week for making herbal oils. Again, I have a post from last year that explains this process in detail. Just type in "herb or herbal oil" in the search bar. The oils I made this year were tarragon oil, cilantro oil, Italian oil (a blend of basil, oregano, garlic chives, chives, parsley), and basil oil. Chervil is coming back again (it's a wonderful, early spring herb) and I may make some with that as well. I also made some dill vinegar using white wine vinegar.
Something new this summer in my garden was scallions. Lots and lots of scallions. And am I glad I planted them! They have been great. I always hesitate pulling onions during the summer and eating them because I want them to get as big as they can. So having a ton of scallions eased that guilt and provided alliums almost all summer. And they are wonderful raw in salads and cooked in just about anything.
Delicious ScallionsAnd finally I must share my happiness over another experiment I did this year. My friend Lisa was planing a Three Sisters Garden so I got so excited about what she was doing that I tried it too. And am I glad I did. What a lovely addition to the garden! It's just beautiful. The 3 sisters are corn, squash, and beans. I planted pie pumpkins for squash, scarlet runner beans, and an edible corn on the cob corn. Here is a link to how this is planted: http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html Here's another website with directions. The reason I like this one is they explain how to save the seeds of the plants for next year. I want to try saving some seed this year and so I find this helpful. http://www.kidsgardening.com/growingideas/projects/march02/mar02-pg1.htm I've saved scarlet runner bean seed in the past. As a matter of fact these plants are from those seeds!
So I thought I'd try corn, pumpkin, and tomato this year. I'll have to double check to be sure my corn and pumpkins aren't hybrid. If they are I won't be able to save them as plants from hybrid seed don't grow true. If you like seed saving heirloom seed/plants are good to grow. More about all this in a later post about seed saving. I'll post a photo of what this lovely 3 sisters planting looks like soon. The beans are in flower and they have the most lovely red flowers that hummingbirds just love. Some pumpkins are the size of very large softballs. And soon the corn will be forming ears. 
Well that's all for now. Happy gardening and remember that gardening makes the world clean and fresh,
Mary
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