Ep. 252 Growing together: Three Sisters gardening | #GoodGrowing

Chris Enroth: 00:05

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are going to be focusing on the Three Sisters gardening technique, kind of made popular. It's originating from Native American agriculture. So you know I'm not doing this by myself.

Chris Enroth: 00:29

I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Ken Johnson: 00:34

Hello, Chris. Have you ever tried this practice?

Chris Enroth: 00:39

I have and failed miserably at it. I think because I didn't know what I was doing. Have you tried it before?

Ken Johnson: 00:47

I've grown the three crops in close proximity, but not, like, intentionally planted them in this way.

Chris Enroth: 00:57

Yes. Well, let's find out if also joining us today, of course, is horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan, Illinois. Emily, have you ever tried growing the three sisters garden?

Emily Swihart: 01:12

Hi, guys. And sort of. I've also grown them personally in close proximity, and I'm trying to remember if I followed a rotation that mimicked this system a little bit better. I can't remember. But our master gardeners have also tried to grow, the three sisters in this traditional sense.

Emily Swihart: 01:34

And we've had some successes and some less successful years. So definitely hope to try again and maybe implement a few more knowledgeable practices into it. But I think most of didn't know what we were doing to some degree. Didn't wait. That's a teaser, I suppose.

Emily Swihart: 01:54

But we didn't do the we didn't have enough patience.

Chris Enroth: 01:58

Yes. Well, for us, we this was actually we did this at the Monmouth Research Farm. It was a cover crop trial, and we had this little extra plot. We're like, it was a sweet corn plot. And we tried to apply the three sisters gardening technique to a modern day planted spacing sweet corn, which, you know, today is just, like, right next to each other.

Chris Enroth: 02:21

It didn't work. I mean, way, way too dense corn plantings to try to fit in beans and squash in there. So yeah. So, yeah, did not did not go so well.

Emily Swihart: 02:35

Well, we're coming up on planting season, so maybe we can find a spot.

Chris Enroth: 02:38

Yes. We'll see. I I after learning more about this technique, I am really interested in giving it a try and kind of becoming more aware of how many thousands of years it seems this has been happening in North America, Central America, and and even looking like it might have also spread down into Southern America. But we're gonna talk more about the history here in in just a second, I guess. So I think it it's probably an appropriate moment for us to read our land acknowledgment statement.

Chris Enroth: 03:15

This is something U of I has, and a lot of other institutions have this to just sort of recognize maybe the past and and what has occurred with, like, Native Americans and and then, you know, what what happened to them. So I'll stop blabbering and just read it. So we would like to begin today by recognizing and acknowledging that the U of I System carries out its mission in its namesake state, Illinois, which includes ancestral lands of the Peoria, the Kaskaskia, the Peankashaw, the Wea, the Miami, the Muskoothen, the Odawa, the Sauk, the Meskwaki, the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Chickasaw Nations, and several other Native American tribes that have called Illinois home in the past. So we have the responsibility to acknowledge these native nations and to work with them as we move forward as a vibrant and inclusive institution. Now that is the first time I have read that statement before.

Chris Enroth: 04:24

You know, they really want us to read that more often. I don't know about you guys. Sometimes it feels a little hollow, you know, coming from such a large and just too, like, Illinois. But but, anyway, I wish we were doing more than just reading a statement.

Emily Swihart: 04:40

I I love the heart behind it. I I I agree. I wish that we were able to engage in in bigger and different ways, but we're trying.

Chris Enroth: 04:52

Yes. And we are talking about Native American agriculture. And if you're watching us, you probably realize this. If you're listening, you probably also realize this. We are, what, three Anglo European descendants here chatting to about this.

Chris Enroth: 05:14

So I we like, we we did a lot of reading before the show. We really tried to source this information coming from Native American sources.

Emily Swihart: 05:25

Yeah. I I appreciate you saying that, Chris. And we talked, you know, beforehand. Like, this is a bit uncomfortable for us because of that. Like, we wanna be as authentic and represent the information as well as we can.

Emily Swihart: 05:39

When we were doing the research, we were trying to find really reliable, like, firsthand information. There's also just not as much of that on the interwebs and in books as because I think because of cultural things, I got thinking a lot about it where there's a lot of traditions, a lot of stories that just haven't been written down, haven't been documented in such a strong way as we in like, Western society, write. Like, we we publish and produce just an obnoxious amount of things. And so that's kind of what we had to try to sift through when we were doing this research. So we have the very best of intentions and have, like you said at the beginning, Chris, like a reverency for this type of knowledge that we enjoy learning about but really acknowledge that you know, we're we're we are learning about it.

Emily Swihart: 06:41

Mhmm.

Ken Johnson: 06:43

Yeah. When I was reading stuff, I I came across a question. So I think usually when we think about three sisters, we're just talking about the crops. But this is from a article from a paper I read that's quoting another paper by Lewandowski, and we can put links to the papers in this. The three sisters complex was not simply an agricultural strategy or technology, but a cultural complex complete with stories, ceremonies, technology, customs, and etiquette.

Ken Johnson: 07:12

So it's not just the we're gonna put corn, beans, and squash in the ground. There's more a lot more to it. I think we'll touch a little bit on that, but just kinda, guess, scraping the surface on some of that stuff.

Chris Enroth: 07:26

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know about you guys. I mean, my mom went through a Native American phase in the nineties, especially when dances with wolves came out. I mean, the whole house got decorated in Native American patterns, but that doesn't necessarily qualify me to speak with any authority on this.

Chris Enroth: 07:45

So I have taken a lot of notes, specifically from Native American authors, farmers that have shared their information online. And, you know, Illinois is just kind of we I mean, there are Native Americans here, but we do not have much representation for any native peoples here, so, unfortunately. Yeah. Actually, I just got the Peoria tribe reached out to me. They're in Oklahoma, but they're looking for seed sources that their ancestors would have grown.

Chris Enroth: 08:24

And so, actually, our our agricultural research stations were able to help them out with that. And I believe Seed Savers Exchange has a repatriation program also. So, you know, we're trying to reconnect some of these native people to some of that agriculture because, you know what, Illinois climate and Oklahoma climate, it's a little different. So your growing conditions, your plant communities are gonna be different.

Emily Swihart: 08:53

That's a really cool project to be adjacent to, you know, to help connect and support. So that's neat. Hopefully, they follow-up.

Chris Enroth: 09:01

I I think so. It it sounded like the the the ARS station was able to connect them with a good seed bank with the catalog of some heirloom types. Yeah. So fingers crossed, it works out. Oh.

Chris Enroth: 09:20

Well, anyway, let's dive right into the three sisters, shall we? I guess the first thing we're gonna discuss is where it came from. So I found an origin story in kind of the Mohawk story of creation. I don't know. Did you guys find other kind of places where the three sisters might have originated in, like, their culture, different tribes?

Emily Swihart: 09:48

So a lot of what I was finding was linking it to the Iroquois, which is a northeastern tribe. And I it just kept coming up. Like, it just like, many, many sources were citing that, and I just maybe it was about five hundred years ago is what it was gonna the approximate timeline. I just kept thinking, like, this is not this cannot be this is what I may be, like, you know, settlers

Ken Johnson: 10:19

Mhmm.

Emily Swihart: 10:20

Discovered it. Certainly not. So no. And I'm really thankful that you were able to find some more stories. And Ken, you did too.

Emily Swihart: 10:26

Right?

Ken Johnson: 10:29

Yeah. A lot of we have the, like, the Northeast, I guess, I think is where a lot of this stuff is at least that I came across. You know, I wasn't doing an exhaustive search on this, but a lot of stuff I came across was more the Northeast type stuff. And I think a lot of these origin stories are are more I'd say more or less the same, but very similar with some differences here and there depending on on the tribe or the nation that that had their their oral tradition. Mhmm.

Emily Swihart: 10:57

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. With the Iroquois, it was it was documented that they would it came to one of the tribal leaders who thought on his deathbed like, he was going to sleep for the last time, but in fact had a dream and was inspired and given knowledge to then pass on to the to the tribe to help support their existence. And and it's a similar pattern, but it it dates much earlier than that was recorded.

Emily Swihart: 11:26

So, Chris, you wanna share the Mohawk origin story as one of an example of this?

Chris Enroth: 11:31

Yes. So this, I heard from Lee Clermont, and she shared the Mohawk story of creation. It was several minutes long. I'm going to give the abridged version, and I will do my best to tell the story. So in the in the beginning, there was the Sky World.

Chris Enroth: 11:55

It was above kind of maybe the plane where we are right now, and in the Sky World is where the Sky People lived. And below that was just water. It was just sounded like there were just birds and fish. And kind of that center point of Skyworld was the tree of life. And a particular leader, it was Skywoman.

Chris Enroth: 12:19

She was the wife of the chief. And Skywoman had a dream to uproot the tree of life. And so she woke up, and she convinced all the men of Skyworld to try to work and uproot the tree. All the men failed. And so the chief came up, and he ripped it out.

Chris Enroth: 12:37

And as Sky Woman looked over into the hole that was created down onto the world below, she fell. And as she was falling, she grabbed a handful of seeds and to try to stop herself, but that was it. And then once that happened, the the birds and all of the animals of the world below saw her falling, and they knew that she was not going to survive this fall. She would not be able to to swim, to to stay alive. And so they did everything they could to stop her.

Chris Enroth: 13:06

So the geese, they started. They formed their their v formation and to slow her fall. All of the animals tried to dive as deep as they could into the ocean to pull earth out, but they couldn't dive deep enough. So tiny muskrat was her name. She went down, and she was able to dive deep, deep, deep, and she started to lose consciousness.

Chris Enroth: 13:29

But as she did, she had a tiny scoop of mud in her paw. And as she floated to the top, she that scoop of mud was placed on turtle shell. And then as soon as this was put on turtle shell, turtle then grew and grew exponentially larger and became the world as we now know it. And I think there's debate whether is that The Americas or are we talking about the entire world? We're not sure, you know, what exactly Turtle Island is, but we know what it as.

Chris Enroth: 14:00

They know it as the world. So and and Turtle Island is kind of that main theme that seems to follow through a lot of these Native American stories. You know, there might be floods or something like that might have happened, but seems like Turtle Island plays a major role in various tribe stories. So, anyway, the geese place Sky Woman on Turtle Island, and she throws the seeds down. They grow into plants.

Chris Enroth: 14:30

Oh, and I forgot to mention at the top of the story, of course, I forget this, that Skywoman, she was pregnant. And so when she was in Skyworld, she fell. So when she was on the Earth, she then gave birth, and her daughter's name was Breath of the Wind. Once Breath of the Wind grew up, she fell in love and married the strong West Wind. She became pregnant with twin sons.

Chris Enroth: 14:56

Their names were Good Mind and Bad Mind. And Good Mind had soft skin and was patient. Bad Mind had skin as hard as flint and was argumentative. Before right before they were born, Bad Mind was impatient to be born. He pushed his way with his sharp head through his mother's belly.

Chris Enroth: 15:17

At the same time as Good Mind was being born natural way, because of this Breath of Wind died. And so as her body laid there, there were three sacred foods that grew from her body, and that is corn, beans, and squash. So that's where we get our three sisters, and they called that the three sisters. There actually were a few other plants to include in this. From her heart grew the sacred tobacco so that you could always communicate with the creator, and from her feet grew wild strawberry.

Chris Enroth: 15:51

So that is at least from the the Mohawk's perspective, the origin story, that's where, like, we start to see the three sisters gardening method being employed right there. And and if folks want to learn more about what happens between good mind and bad mind, there's a whole on keep going. I'll leave a link below to Lee's talk about the the origin story.

Emily Swihart: 16:18

That was nice, Chris. Thanks for sharing.

Chris Enroth: 16:21

Mhmm. So I got a lot more notes here of things we're not gonna talk about today because I went down lots of rabbit holes. So we have just learned about, you know, the three sisters crops are culturally significant. They are sacred for a lot of the tribes. So I guess let's talk about it.

Chris Enroth: 16:47

And what is it, and how is it done?

Emily Swihart: 16:52

Yeah. I think that's a great idea. I'll I'll start. I really enjoyed this part of it because of the applicability of it, I think. I really went down down the rabbit hole for research on this because I do have some interest in maybe implementing this and and learning from it.

Emily Swihart: 17:12

And so, again, it's the three sisters. They are corn, beans, and squash. And so I guess at the top, we can just say there's a lot of varieties of these crops. Right? Because of the wide distribution of the tribes that were using it and the kind of the the extensive nature of cultivating these crops, like, of course, different tribes would be selecting and saving seeds from different plants that were producing well in their region, meeting their needs nutritionally.

Emily Swihart: 17:47

You know, like, we select plants today. Like, we choose for different characteristics. Like, they would be doing the same thing. So over time, different cultivars of, of each of these would emerge. And so I think that's really neat.

Emily Swihart: 18:01

You two found some lists. Ken, do you want to share your list? Yours was pretty extensive of like a quantity of different cultivars. I put you right on the spot. You got that buried in all your notes.

Emily Swihart: 18:13

So Let

Ken Johnson: 18:13

me find my pape I didn't make notes. I just have stuff highlighted in papers. So Okay. So, yeah, so this is this paper is historical indigenous food preparation using produce or the three sisters intercropping system. And so this, they're talking about so this is predominant a lot of it, at least according to this paper, is, you know, in Northeastern US and Southern US is where you see a lot three sisters, but it was still done, you know, around around North America.

Ken Johnson: 18:48

So here there were genetic information verifies that certain northern flints were selected for high sugar, low oil, and high starch contents or heavy seed coat. There's listed one paper they're citing or source they're citing listed 33 sweet corn varieties. Popcorn was also a group special group of flint corn, of which 25 varieties were recognized, and potted corn was suggested, a very primitive form of corn described by another one. Then for beans, now there's one source they're citing, 60 different varieties, and they gave details of 27 of them. Another paper lists 23 varieties from and they actually have names, so they don't read all of them.

Ken Johnson: 19:40

But white cranberry, dwarf or pole red, crease back, lazy wife, yellow cranberry, sulfur or eureka, white kidney, white marrow, wampum, round yellow six weeks, long yellow six weeks, so a variety of different types. And that's just, I think I didn't actually, you know, trace down those sources, but we're we're still talking dozens of different types just from those. And there's probably even more. You know, starting get into those land races and all that stuff too.

Emily Swihart: 20:16

Well, thanks. Yeah. That is you said it's from the Northeast. That's where, like, most of the information we found is coming from. But, yeah, you can just imagine that, like, across North America into, like, Central America, those tribes.

Emily Swihart: 20:30

This is the variety. Like, the climate variety is the climate, the soils, rainfall, all of that would lead to those natural selections. And so very, very cool. Okay. So let's talk real quick about growing them because we've had some successes personally, and we could learn a few things.

Emily Swihart: 20:47

So the three sisters, let's start with the oldest. The oldest is believed to be maize or corn as we know it. And so we plant these in succession. So they're not all planted at the same time, which might have been one of my mistakes that I that we made is planting them all, like, that that scheduled gardening day. Right?

Emily Swihart: 21:07

So corn is planted first. Now remember, these are all warm season crops, and so we're planting them after the you know, when the soil has warmed and after the risk of frost is has diminished. So corn, being the oldest sister, planted first. And corn is, of course, climbing for the beans. So the beans we're talking about will be the climbing beans, and corn is gonna provide that support.

Emily Swihart: 21:31

We have a kind of a natural trellis for it. It also has an anchoring root system. It's more of a shallow spreading root system, and so there was a lot of information emphasizing the way that not only the plants above ground were interacting with each other, but then how they were interacting below ground to just acknowledge that this was a complete system. Right? It was there was an awareness of, and there was an appreciation for the way that these different plants grow both above ground and below ground to support, to grow in harmony together.

Emily Swihart: 22:03

So corn is planted. First, developing that shallow kind of spreading root system, staying in like the top layer of the the soil. It is then followed approximately two weeks later after the corn has reached, you know, four to six inches in height. After germination, beans are planted near the base of it. And so they have a support system that's gonna grow and they can climb up.

Emily Swihart: 22:28

And then the beans have this deep taproot, and so they're gonna reach down lower into the soil and kinda anchor things access nutrients and and water that are kinda out of the the layer of corn. So they're sharing the resource of the soil in different ways. We also know that corn or excuse me, beans has a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that converts atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, which over time is gonna make more nitrogen available to corn, which is a heavy feeder. It needs a lot of nitrogen to to grow and produce and reach its its potential. Now it's important to note that the symbiotic relationship happens in the first year, and the conversion of nitrogen into ammonia happens in year one.

Emily Swihart: 23:22

And then those roots need to decompose, and then that nitrogen is then made available the following year. So there's kind of succession happening. We can talk about what that looks like in the different methods of planting coming up. But so we have, the beans starting to grow, again, two weeks after the corn has emerged and has started to grow. Then we follow it by squash.

Emily Swihart: 23:44

Squash is planted kind of around the perimeter of them, and this is, again, after about a week following the beans. So we plant the corn. We wait two weeks. We plant the beans. We wait a week or so.

Emily Swihart: 23:56

We plant the squash. So you're talking about a month long plantings plan here. But these vines are spreading. They're going to spread out across the soil. They're going to put down some auxiliary roots along those vines as they spread out.

Emily Swihart: 24:08

So spreading out the resource recruitment for plants, so it's not everything concentrated right near the base of the corn or where the beans are planted, which is beneficial to the squash. Of course, they have these huge leaves that help to shade the soil, do some weed suppression. I was also reading about serving as a barrier, especially the ones that are more prickly and thorny and a deterrent for pests, kind of an IPM system. And so pretty ingenious. Like, when you kind of put it all, all the pieces together, it makes sense that they would be complementary to each other.

Emily Swihart: 24:45

So I'll pause and let you guys fill in some details I might have left out. And then I wanna talk about, like, the methods. Because it's not I referenced, like, planting them near each other. That's one of the like, the mounding method. There's other ones that might work for people or we might wanna try.

Emily Swihart: 24:58

But I'll first pause.

Chris Enroth: 25:01

Well, I'll good.

Ken Johnson: 25:03

Go ahead, Ken. Do it, Ken. You go.

Chris Enroth: 25:05

Okay. Well, I will go back to some of my notes that I thought we were gonna talk about. So the Menominee tribe, they talk about elder plants. And Emily, you mentioned how the corn is the oldest.

Emily Swihart: 25:19

Mhmm.

Chris Enroth: 25:20

Corn would be the elder plant, so it is in charge of sharing resources. The the Menominee people, they got into the whole, like, resource sharing via root systems. I think we're getting into, like, mycorrhizae territory there. We won't go that far into it. We're gonna stick with three sisters right here, right now.

Chris Enroth: 25:39

So but, yeah, the elder plant would be the corn plant in this case.

Ken Johnson: 25:45

And what

Emily Swihart: 25:46

were you gonna add?

Ken Johnson: 25:46

I said I think you covered the the plants fairly well. And then I came across some stuff on, like, you know, competition release and all that. We can get into that later if we want. Sure.

Emily Swihart: 26:03

So we we're just gonna spend some time talking about the methods of planting if anybody wants to implement this. I I need to give some more thought to how it might actually work in my garden because we have always done the mound method. That's kind of the one I think that most people, like, think of. You're just kind of clustering everything together. That method is effective in areas that have adequate rainfall and an abundant rainfall, which is not everywhere that the or the Three Sisters was grown.

Emily Swihart: 26:35

And so there are different ways of kind of modifying the system depending on the climate. So if you're gonna be in an area that has abundant rainfall or maybe locally, if we do have a drier summer but we can supply supplemental rain or supplemental water, this might be a method that works out. But you're growing all four or all of, three seeds kind of in a in a space together, planting the corn and then planting very close to it, the beans, and planting near near the squash so it all is clustered together. And these mounds in a garden can be spaced approximately three to four feet apart, and so you're you can grow more than one mound. It's recommended to grow more than one mound for adequate pollination, especially of the corn.

Emily Swihart: 27:21

So you've got mounds kind of throughout a garden, again space three to four feet. Then there's the field method, where we are growing in kind of square plots. And so you would have corn kind of in the middle and kind of a it's it's a in my mind, it's a mound at a larger scale. So we have more corn in the middle, and then we would have beans around the perimeter of that. And then outside of that, kind of on I saw one where it was, like, on either end, kind of like in a it looked like a it became like a diamond shape with with because the squash gets really, really large.

Emily Swihart: 27:59

So you would have kind of beans in the cluster or in a in a cluster in the middle, kind of a circle around the the corn. You'd have your beans. And then your squash, you would have just a fewer fewer number of plantings because they get so large. So that's a field method. Then there's the landscape or rotational method, and this is in the regions where rainfall is limited or is least abundant.

Emily Swihart: 28:22

And so thinking of, like, the Southwest is where this might have been implemented, Which is that each individual crops are planted by themselves, like in kind of a small monoculture adjacent to each other. And there's crop rotation that's happening in these sites. And so over the course of three years, you would rotate through all three crops on a certain parcel of land. And it would always be that your corn would follow beans because of that nitrogen availability in that following year. And so this kind of helped optimize the the resource sharing, you know, especially the the nutrients, but didn't cluster them altogether because of the limited water.

Emily Swihart: 29:08

So just a different method. Perhaps we could try different things if we were, you know, so inclined. I kinda like the field grown method. I'm intrigued by that one.

Chris Enroth: 29:18

Even well,

Ken Johnson: 29:21

Do it again.

Chris Enroth: 29:22

Mhmm. You go first this time.

Ken Johnson: 29:24

So one of the ones I came across was this was somebody in Wisconsin. This is actually their their thesis, and they were working with a a tribe in in Northern Wisconsin. And they were doing, like, the mounds. So they're making, so corn and beans were in one mound and another mound, separate mound for squash kind of around the corn and bean mounds. So here, the the mounds for corn and beans were about, four inches high, 18 inches in diameter at the base, and then up kinda narrowing to 10 inches at the top.

Ken Johnson: 29:59

They're putting four corn seeds in that, and on the sides of that mound, they're putting the bean seeds in. And then they're making, squash mounds, which were a couple inches high, about 12 inches across at the base, and they're kinda alternating those. And one squash seed. I think they planted multiple squash seeds, but thinned it to one plant per mound for that.

Chris Enroth: 30:29

I I was just gonna say even though it has been industrialized at the scale that it's at today in Illinois, I mean, we do have corn. We have soybeans. And we're the number one pumpkin growing state in The US. I mean, we still have that three sisters connection, sort of, we're stretching this out a little bit. But it's at the industrial scale now.

Chris Enroth: 30:57

It's it's, I mean Landscape level. Yeah. We've we've paved over everything else with our agriculture. Yeah.

Emily Swihart: 31:07

Yeah. I'm not sure that's exactly what is recommended in this system, but I like doesn't

Chris Enroth: 31:16

really have the spirit of the

Emily Swihart: 31:18

original. It's yeah. Yep. That is interesting. I mean, like, I appreciate that connection, though, for Illinois.

Emily Swihart: 31:26

Kinda had forgotten about or I had not made that connection with the pumpkin being the pumpkin capital. Like, I like that. I like the heart of it on the ground. Maybe some different modifications.

Chris Enroth: 31:41

It doesn't feel like the Three Sisters Growing Method when you're living here. But, yes, it's No.

Emily Swihart: 31:47

No. No. Well,

Chris Enroth: 31:51

the other thing that happened is is Ken I'm curious about, like, you kinda maybe found a few sources on, like, is this effective if we look at, like, the modern way that we grow agricultural crops, this industrial scale? Was three sisters an effective way to grow?

Ken Johnson: 32:11

So, yes, it can be. So I came across a couple more papers so we can put links to them. A couple of these are open access. Others people have to find a way to access them. But, so one was yield grow yield growth and labor demands of growing maize beans and squash and monoculture versus three sisters.

Ken Johnson: 32:31

This was in North Carolina. Researchers at Davidson College, again, working with a the Catawba Indian Nation out there, so they're working with these actual tribes to do this stuff. So this one, they were looking at, like the title implies, you know, how much you know, the not only the yield, but how much time is required to do this as either three systems are growing these plants and monocultures. So for the yield, so with three sisters, corn had a higher average dry weight compared to monoculture. And then the beans end was less beans growing at Three Sisters, the yield was less slightly less than monoculture, and squash was significantly less, in Three Sisters compared to monoculture.

Ken Johnson: 33:23

And then when it comes to, let's see here, for for, like, labor, plants and monoculture treatments, was three point six five hours per bed. Part of this is you're with beans or putting up trellises and stuff like that, so that's a lot of labor involved in that. Three sisters was two point six hours of labor per bed. But, like, if you look at just the squash and bean plants, it was about one point nine and one point seven hours, respectively, for those monocultures, so less time on those. I guess I should probably say how big these beds were.

Ken Johnson: 34:00

They were not small beds. So they were 40 to 46 feet long and four feet wide. So these are large beds. So you're spending a couple hours per bed. So this is throughout the growing season maintaining these.

Ken Johnson: 34:18

Then they also looked at basically how much time or labor required per, like, amount of produce produced. So monoculture, Drew introduced 25.78 pounds of produce per hour of labor, whereas Three Sisters did 20.34 pounds of produce per hour of labor. But they noted that squash accounted for 89 almost 90% of the mass of the harvest for the monoculture. So, again, that's kind of a little disproportionate there as far as the squash goes. So and then so one of the things with this, we talked about, you know, corn being the the elder plant or the kind of the main planters.

Ken Johnson: 34:59

This is kinda like the main crop, more or less. And there's another paper, again, looking at, you know, looking at yields and stuff. So this is root foraging elicits niche, complementary dependent yield advantage in the ancient three sisters polyculture. So with this, they're, you know, they're arguing that corn is the dominant species, And that when you so when we have our growing corn in a monoculture, we've got all this competition with the plants. When we put in these this corn and squash, which are competing differently or maybe not as strong competitors, we get this competitive release.

Ken Johnson: 35:35

So those corns are the corn is more produces more, so I'll just read from the article. Competitive release through the replacement of a dominant competitor by a weaker one. When two two maize plants in monoculture, maize were replaced by two bean plants to make maize bean bean. The two highly competitive maize neighbors were replaced with less competitive bean. And as a consequence, the maize benefited from the competitive release with greater biomass nutrient uptake and biomass as well as greater lateral root density.

Ken Johnson: 36:07

Hence, maize always benefited from polyculture in these studies. Maize is such a strong competitor that maize growth was increased when growth when grown with common bean compared with maize and monoculture, thus yield advantage of maize bean bean polyculture rose because maize gained from competitive release, resulting in a positive selection effect only. When one bean plant was replaced with one squash plant to make the maize bean squash polyculture, complementary increased, and therefore, the subordinate species also contributed to the yield advantage and maize being squash were similar in shoot biomass and all that stuff. So, basically, by getting rid of some of that maize or that corn, putting it with these weaker competitors, you're increasing your your maize production at the cost of, you know, bean and squash in the monoculture. But I think, like, per unit area, you're you're you're still producing more.

Ken Johnson: 37:12

We kind of include all three of those crops compared to the monoculture. Though. So depending on your perspective, yes or no. It works better.

Emily Swihart: 37:21

One of the sources I found said, the three sisters produced two to four times more energy and more protein per hectic than the same area planted in a monoculture with the three crops. And so kinda to that effect of overall gains, maybe it's in different the different crops. Like, you have a a cost benefits ratio between which crop you're getting more of, but overall gain.

Ken Johnson: 37:50

Yeah. So they they did to that first article, they did a land equivalent ratio. So, basically, how much land do you need to grow the same thing? So for the maize and squash plants so what is it? You need to plant 1.788 beds of maize and squash plants in monoculture to obtain the equivalent yield of one bed of the three sisters.

Ken Johnson: 38:11

It's almost Yeah. So yeah. Basically, yeah, what you were saying there. Yeah. And I think they were arguing, like, you could grow grow the three sisters, and then if you needed, like, more beans, you would just do a monoculture of beans to supplement.

Ken Johnson: 38:27

Yeah.

Emily Swihart: 38:28

Oh, I was just gonna say, like, kind of along that same line, I was trying to think of, like, the amount of space that you would need to be cultivating as a as a culture to sustain new population. And there was one kinda succinct summary that said that one hectare so that's about two and a half acres, if that's a more familiar measurement to folks. So one hectare could provide enough food energy. So just the calories for 13 people for an entire year to support 13 people for a year, and enough protein to support 15 people for one year. So a little bit more like, we need a little bit less protein.

Emily Swihart: 39:11

You know, we just need more calories, so that's a fewer number of people. But a large still I don't know. Like, what is your reaction to that? Because to me, I'm like, that's a lot of land for like but it's one year. It's 13 people.

Emily Swihart: 39:26

Like, I don't I don't know. Maybe I don't have a good sense of if that seems

Ken Johnson: 39:30

So so I found one in the paper. It was a third of an acre per person for substance. This is if they're supplementing their diet with hunting and fishing. You need a third of an acre of the three sisters per person.

Emily Swihart: 39:42

That would be about approximately where we would land with this calculation. So yeah. What were we gonna say, Chris, before I interrupted?

Chris Enroth: 39:53

No. I well, you mentioned throughout the year, and so, well, let's talk about eating this stuff. Like

Emily Swihart: 40:00

Yeah.

Chris Enroth: 40:01

That's another huge reason why these three particular species are so critical is when can you harvest these, Emily? Like, throughout the whole year, so what are we what are we getting out of the garden here when we're doing the Three Sisters Method?

Emily Swihart: 40:16

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, everyone who's grown any of these crops knows and I'm gonna go back to that variety. Right? Like, the the difference of varieties that we're growing for these crops. So there's some that are meant to be eaten fresh or that are or more desirably eaten, like fresh during the growing season harvested while the plant is still producing.

Emily Swihart: 40:38

So you can start harvesting and start eating some of the produce. Mean, produce pretty dang quick in the growing season. So let's say in the Midwest, in Illinois, start harvesting late mid June late June, depending on kinda when you get it in the ground. You start having some fresh produce. You can I didn't find anything about this, but I I I have a hard time believing this didn't happen, which was, like, succession planting too or, like, spreading out your plantings, either just because of the sheer amount of space that they needed to plant or knowing that you

Ken Johnson: 41:15

could

Emily Swihart: 41:15

harvest your squash and your corn over an expansive amount of time if you plant later? Right? You can do succession planting. But harvesting all through the growing season, and then all of these crops can be dried or cured for long term storage. We can store beans for a long time.

Emily Swihart: 41:39

We can store corn for a long long time and squash. Some of the squash can be stored for months and months to get you through those winter months. So Chris, you mentioned, like, they were supplemented by there's other foods, of course, that were being grown and preserved. There's hunting that occurred to supplement the diet. But these three really can get you through a bulk of the year, know, with with proper planning and storage.

Emily Swihart: 42:09

So pretty amazing. Pretty amazing to think about.

Ken Johnson: 42:12

Yeah. Because I wanna hear they talk about eating squash flowers. So maybe it was even earlier than your green beans. And suddenly, squash, the flowers, the immature fruit. We're letting immature corn and even your your flint corns and stuff, you could still eat that as in the milk stage.

Ken Johnson: 42:34

Yeah. Like, would pick sweet corn. It may not taste quite the same as our our modern sweet corn does, but you could still eat it in that milk stage and mature again. Yeah. Let it fully mature.

Emily Swihart: 42:45

Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, also beyond just eating it and being like, obtaining calories from it, like, the nutrition that is provided through these kind of three plants again, there's some supplementation happening in the diet, but these three plants provide a bulk of, like, the necessary nutrients to support human growth and activity. So I'm not a nutritionist at all. I enjoy learning about it, but I'm super out of my elephant here.

Emily Swihart: 43:12

So I'm just going to read some of the nutritional components that are provided by each of the species because I think anyone who's got a grasp of nutrition will appreciate the variety. So corn, primarily carbohydrates. We kinda know this. But it's also high in fiber and vitamin b vitamins, are useful in a lot of different functions, but they they help with metabolism. They help metabolize different nutrients.

Emily Swihart: 43:44

And so useful to have I think there's eight different vitamin Bs. I might be wrong on that. I want to say there's eight. You guys could Google it while I'm running through the rest of this list, and correct me if I'm wrong. So a wide variety of of the b vitamins.

Emily Swihart: 44:00

There are minerals that we need to support function, including zinc, copper, and manganese are all included in corn. And then beans are high in amino acids. There's also high in soluble fiber, folate, iron for healthy immune systems, potassium, again or see, potassium and magnesium, and then that protein, kind of that muscle fueling protein, source in beans. And then squash are antioxidants, which also helps with the immune system, vitamin a and vitamin c. And so, not a lot of repetition in the list.

Emily Swihart: 44:39

Like, they're complementing each other in the nutrients that they're providing instead of having like, everything having, you know, carbohydrates and fiber and you know? Yeah. There's not lot of repetition. So nice nice kinda well rounded diet. Did you Google it, Ken?

Emily Swihart: 44:56

How many vitamin b?

Ken Johnson: 44:58

Eight.

Emily Swihart: 44:59

Yes.

Chris Enroth: 45:00

Nice. Do

Ken Johnson: 45:01

you wanna know what they are?

Chris Enroth: 45:03

Is it b one through b eight?

Ken Johnson: 45:06

No. Actually, you skip b four. So it's b one, which is thiamine, b two, which is riboflavin, b three, which is niacin, b five, pantothenic acid, b six, paroxine, b seven, biotin. Is that the stuff your fingernails?

Emily Swihart: 45:24

Yes. I take a supplement of that. So I didn't know that I could just eat more corn.

Ken Johnson: 45:30

B nine folate folic acid and then b twelve cobalamin. I don't know. I only see that as b twelve. So there you go. Fascinating.

Ken Johnson: 45:43

Yeah.

Emily Swihart: 45:46

Yeah. I I really love how they, like, nutritionally and just like all of this is just brilliant. So, like, the brilliance of people who were paying attention to the land, paying attention to nutrition. I think in a way that I certainly don't enjoy anymore in our modern day culture. You know, like, we like to grow these things, but, like, just intimately involved with these plants that we're feeding them literally, but then also growing, you know, to support them, working together.

Emily Swihart: 46:19

I'm just I'm sorry. I'm rambling, but I just love it. I just love the brilliance of all of this. And it's like we think it's like new knowledge, and it's like, this is so not new knowledge. So

Chris Enroth: 46:31

I mean, it was all passed down, though, from generation to the next through stories. Like, I mean, they didn't have textbooks back then. There was no Google. You had to learn everything you could from your your elders, the people who came before you.

Emily Swihart: 46:50

Yeah.

Chris Enroth: 46:51

Figure it out on your own.

Emily Swihart: 46:54

Mhmm. What

Ken Johnson: 46:56

was the the farm you found? Was it the Hopi farm? How many generations was that?

Chris Enroth: 47:01

Yes. The Hopi farm, they believe it was a 168 generations of farming that has occurred in that area of that of the Hopi tribe. Now I didn't I I only read that they were growing maize and melons. I'm sure there's probably beans there, but I did not just in the my read, I didn't see it in there. So I didn't include it in today.

Chris Enroth: 47:29

Yeah.

Ken Johnson: 47:32

See, when I was looking for stuff on trying to find stuff for the would have been what is now Illinois, I came across a a podcast where they were interviewing somebody from Washington University in Saint Louis, an archaeologist, talking about cahokia. She was saying that it was only corn and squash. Like, beans didn't show up until towards the end of Cahokia. So for majority of the time, Cahokia was around. I guess it was it was just the two, corn and squash.

Emily Swihart: 48:03

Which I think is fascinating. And I I don't know if she have an explanation as to why they think that is because Cahokia was, like, a trading center. Right? Like, talk about how the the this knowledge is passed down from generation to generation. It was also passed from tribe to tribe.

Emily Swihart: 48:21

Like, they they would interact. They would like, just like our societies and cultures do, like, move and cross paths and gather for different, occasions and and do commerce. Right? So it's really interesting that maybe beans didn't show up, you know, for a while, or maybe they did, and we don't know have the evidence. You know, like, I I also like to think, like, we're still, like, learning so much through discovery and archaeological excavation.

Ken Johnson: 48:51

Yeah. Beans just start showing up in the, I guess, the archaeological Yeah. Stuff until towards the end. Was it I guess we didn't really we didn't mention, like, when three sisters was kind of moved up or adopted. So it's October was kind of the earliest evidence of it being in, let's say, North America, feeling that maybe United States and Canada, North America, and then over the next five hundred years spread throughout.

Ken Johnson: 49:23

So karaoke would have been, I guess, starting before that, which could explain why I saw that.

Emily Swihart: 49:31

Sure.

Chris Enroth: 49:34

And I misspoke. It was not a 168. It was a 128 generations. So it was twenty five hundred to three thousand years worth of farming in that one spot by that tribe.

Emily Swihart: 49:48

That is incredible. It's incredible for a lot of reasons, not least of which is considering the history of in the last five hundred years.

Ken Johnson: 50:04

Mhmm.

Chris Enroth: 50:06

Well, I think we covered the three sisters, but I sort of wanted to finish with, a list of the honorable harvest, that I got from listening to Robin Wall Kimmer speak. Robin Wall Kimmer, I think she's with the Potawatomi tribe, and she wrote Braiding Sweetgrass, which I know you've read, Emily. Correct?

Emily Swihart: 50:31

Love it. Highly read

Ken Johnson: 50:32

Good book.

Chris Enroth: 50:33

I think I've all We gotta get it on

Ken Johnson: 50:35

the list. Books.

Emily Swihart: 50:36

And her book is Chris, you read the service berry, which ties to this.

Chris Enroth: 50:42

Mhmm.

Emily Swihart: 50:42

Go ahead.

Chris Enroth: 50:43

Yes. So she came together with the the honorable harvest. I just if that's alright, I wanted to just go through the list of this. It shouldn't be too terribly long. Okay?

Chris Enroth: 50:56

Alright. So the first one is never harvest the first plant you see. Therefore, you won't harvest the last, which is so smart. I mean, you could harvest all of the corn and and eat it all, but what are you gonna grow next year? You have to leave some behind if only for seed or if for, you know, wildlife or or whatnot.

Chris Enroth: 51:21

So that's the first rule. I really loved hearing that one. It was a really good one. Whether you're harvesting from a vegetable garden or from, like, prairie seed out in the prairie trying to get more prairie. Her next kind of point here on the honorable harvest list is ask for permission.

Chris Enroth: 51:41

So introduce yourself. Tell the plant what you plan to use it for. And the reason for this is because, you know, whether you're harvesting a plant or an animal or something, you are taking a life which requires you to be personally accountable for that. And so and and she said, yes. Talk ask for permission.

Chris Enroth: 52:05

And I'd say, you know what, Ken, Emily? The neighbors are priority already talking about us, so let them have something to talk about. You can be out there talking to your garden plants asking for permission and telling them what you plan to do with them. The next one is to if you ask, you have to listen. So just pause for a second.

Chris Enroth: 52:27

Just listen. It can be something inside you. It can be some outward sign. They can just be a feeling and just go on. So I think it's like getting to this, like, mindfulness of gardening.

Chris Enroth: 52:45

It's like, alright. You can garden for mindfulness, but then when you're gardening, you you then really can get into some mindfulness, work here. She did say this is an important step because taking without permission is also known as stealing. So it's it's an important thing to ask. Next is to use everything you take.

Chris Enroth: 53:08

And if you can harvest in a way that there is either a benefit to the plant or the community in which it grows. And then the a very important thing is to then share the harvest and then give back through stewardship. And really through all of this, I just wrote down and starred the word gratitude. I mean, you're just you're just being grateful this whole time. So that is Robin Wall Kimmer's honorable harvest list.

Chris Enroth: 53:40

And so, yeah, I just wanted to end with that today. I don't know if anyone you guys had any thoughts about that. Are you gonna start to ask in your plans, talking to them, or do you already do that?

Emily Swihart: 53:50

Yeah. That's how I get through every day. I'm just gonna be debriefing with them at the end of the day. Mhmm.

Chris Enroth: 53:55

Yep.

Emily Swihart: 53:56

No. I I I joke, but it it is a mindfulness. It is an intention. Right? Like, we, I think, sometimes can get hurried, you know, or I I don't like, we just it's the garden to me is, like, a refuge.

Emily Swihart: 54:19

It is a place to slow down. And I nature is also like, in a lot of her books, she talks about, like, wild harvesting and foraging. And, like, I don't do as much of that. We got some morel mushrooms a couple weeks ago, which we were certainly thankful for. But, like, that, you know, that same ethic, that same intention, that same, like, reverence for, like, a gift from the earth can be applied to the gardens that, like, we think we're doing so much to grow.

Emily Swihart: 54:50

You know, like, I think that there can be this idea that, like, well, I planted the pepper, and, like, I earned this pepper because I, you know, bought the plant and watered it when it needed to. And it's like, well, yeah. Yes. And that still wasn't always a guarantee of success. Like, this is a gift.

Emily Swihart: 55:08

Like, having I kind of being I think to me, like, that gratitude enriches the experience of of gardening and growing and that mindfulness. Yeah. You're right, Chris. So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. And that book, Serviceberry okay.

Emily Swihart: 55:26

I'm I'm gonna share just an honesty. This is safe space. Nobody is gonna hear this except you too. So I'm just gonna confess. I will read anything she writes.

Emily Swihart: 55:35

I adore her writing style. Like, she's just a brilliant author and advocate. And so I will read anything she writes. So I picked up the service berry because I love that tree, and I thought it was gonna be about the tree, and it's not. And I was like, wait a minute.

Emily Swihart: 55:53

What's going on? But that whole book, it was better than being about the the actual species. Kind of about that the economy, that gift economy, and that honorable harvest, and and gratitude, and mindfulness. So highly recommend it. It's a very short read.

Emily Swihart: 56:11

I zipped through it in this afternoon. It's very short, but really, really lovely. So there. I got that off my chest. I feel better.

Emily Swihart: 56:20

Thanks,

Ken Johnson: 56:23

guys. Yeah. I like that list. I think, like, wanna say, you kinda get caught up in life and just the the hustle and bustle, and I think sometimes that extends to the garden, at least for me, where I'd say it's it's no longer relaxing. It's, I gotta get this done or this, and the other.

Ken Johnson: 56:40

Yeah, taking that time to, I guess, that mindfulness or your moment of, whatever you wanna call it. Take that time to take that time to enjoy it, I guess.

Chris Enroth: 56:53

Yeah. Yeah. Dot always just on thanksgiving. Yeah. I I I'd say we we require we want our kids to, like, pray before a meal, and, oh my gosh, they get through that in a hurry.

Chris Enroth: 57:07

It's like, slow down. You're you're being thankful. Be great. Like, this is your gratitude moment here that this food's here. So yeah.

Chris Enroth: 57:16

Yeah. I mean, it it it all ties together. It's it's it's a similar just showing that gratitude to the world. Yeah. Alright.

Chris Enroth: 57:27

Well, that was a lot of great information about Three Sisters Gardening and I guess dipping our toes a little bit into Native American culture history. So yeah, I had a lot of fun researching this. With a Good Growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by I've lost track, Ken Johnson. Yes. Alright.

Chris Enroth: 57:52

Emily, thank you so much for being on the show today, chatting about the Three Sisters gardening techniques.

Emily Swihart: 58:00

Oh, it's my pleasure. I like I said, I adore kind of diving into this this culture. There's many different cultures around the world we can explore, and this one is one of my favorites to learn about. So I appreciate the opportunity, guys. And,

Chris Enroth: 58:15

Ken, thank you so much also as well, being here, chatting about the Three Sisters gardening.

Ken Johnson: 58:21

Yes. Thank you both. I think I've got a few more rabbit holes I need to chase down.

Chris Enroth: 58:26

Oh. There's so many so many of I have I've I've I'm gonna need a new pad of paper, I think. Yeah. It was This was a really fascinating one. I I feel like we need to get a guest on the show that is just That's part of this world.

Ken Johnson: 58:42

Yeah. Because we're we're only scratching the surface Yeah. Of this. So Yes. Thank you and let's do this again next week.

Chris Enroth: 58:51

Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're getting into summertime almost. Let's not wish away all of our spring quite just yet. We're gonna do a q and a show next week. So if listeners, watchers, viewers, if you have questions, our emails are down below in the old description thing.

Chris Enroth: 59:10

So please feel free, email us, throw a question in the comments section. Yeah. Reach out and we'll try our best to answer them on next week's show. Well, listeners, thank you doing what you do best and that is listening or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.

Disembodied voice: 59:35

University of Illinois Extension.

Emily Swihart: 59:40

Okey dokey. You learned a new term, doobly doo. Doobly doo.