Hey everyone: It’s Matt, the Stoned, Ape Farmer coming at you from Farm For All, and today I want to talk to you about this checkerboard, three sisters, bed, and all of the features that I designed into it. Let’s do it So. The other day I featured this checkerboard bed in my video on gardening. Without irrigation, it’s getting to be pretty late in the season now. I’ve been planning on putting the second one of these beds in, and I need to do it now if there’s any chance of maturing a crop at all. Even, getting it in really soon.
I might miss my window, but I’m gonna do it and I want to bring you guys along when I do it, so you can see how the prep is done, but first I want to go over some of the design features that I built into this bed. First of all, I didn’t want to irrigate. Well, it’s not that I didn’t want to irrigate although I don’t but even if I did I couldn’t We don’t have a functioning well at the moment, so irrigation is not an option, One of the things that I did was build these shallow depressions, that catches The rainwater and directs it to the plant’s roots That is, one of the major features to the design and go over it and all of the major water-saving features in that other video link in the description. If you want to learn more about that Today, I’m gonna focus on some of the other features, The other major feature of this bed is that. I wanted it, along with a dozen chickens, to produce enough calories to feed a person for a year.
According to the back of the envelope, Math this bed will do that. What I did was pull the yields per plant as best as I could scrounge them from seed, catalogs, and reviews of the varieties that I’m growing and then use data from the USDA to calculate how many calories it would produce. Now granted. That is generally assuming an ideal yield from all the reviews and the information in the seed catalogs, I’m not gonna get that first year.
For example, I only got 75 percent germination/survival on the corn that I planted, so I’m already taking a 25 % hit right. There. The other thing is that I don’t have compost this is heavy clay that hasn’t been amended a lot. The plants are going to struggle in this, so I’m not gonna reach my goal this year, but I want to see how close this bed gets. So what I did was find all of the yields that were expected.
For these varieties multiply that by the number of plants that I’m growing in this bed and multiply that figure by the calorie values that I got from the USDA. What I came up with assuming that winter squash is 80 % flesh and 20 % seeds is that. Winter squash flesh, plus the seeds plus the corn plus the beans plus the eggs from a dozen chickens all come up to about 730,000 calories which are equal to 2,000 calories a day and based on a standard, 2,000 calories a day, a diet that’ll feed a person for a year. It won’t be all of your nutrition you should still be eating. Greens and other vegetables, on top of what is growing in this bed but it’ll technically grow enough calories.
To keep you alive, If you get a perfect yield, or at least an ideal yield, not a perfect yield.
.An ideal yield based on what other people are harvesting from these varieties. The size of this bed was another important feature. I wanted to maintain a relatively small footprint, while still providing enough space that I could grow plants without irrigation and I wanted to accommodate enough corn plants that I could save seeds without triggering inbreeding depression If you’re not aware, inbreeding depression is a common feature of, outcrossing plants and basically, it’s
If you buy a named variety of a plant …, So you buying this case, I’m growing Cascade, Ruby, Gold, corn if you, buy Cascade, Ruby Gold, corn, those seeds don’t all have the same genetics. They have a variety of genetics, They’re all similar enough that when you grow it, you’re gonna get basically the same thing, but what’s under the hood, is quite varied Inbreeding. Depression is a feature of outcrossing plants that, when the genetics get too limited, the plants lose their vigor They’re trying to self-destruct They’re trying to commit suicide because they don’t want to pass on their limited genetics to future generations and limit that plant’s capacity to survive in an unknown environment Different plants will have Different numbers of plants that you need to save seeds, from in order to prevent inbreeding depression. Sometimes, It’s a couple of dozen sometimes 20 or 30corn – is one of the worst ones. For inbreeding depression. You need to save seeds from 100 or 200 plants.
Minimum More is always better The way I set up this bed. It has just over 200 plants in it, so it’s perfect for saving seeds from It also happens to be the fact. That most seed suppliers sell their corn in packets, of roughly half an ounce and 1/2 an ounce also works out to roughly 200 seeds. So this bed, not only allows you to grow enough plants to save your own seed but also accommodates exactly a packet of seed. Of course, you won’t get a hundred percent germination, but that’s a later discussion.
Resize that I ended up figuring out Would provide all of these features was a 22-1/2 by 22-1/2 foot bed Which comes out to just a little over 500square feet. It accommodates all the corn plants at the right spacing it accommodates all of the squash at the right spacing and you don’t have to irrigate it. It was the best of all worlds. Of course.
This bed features all of the standard features of the three sisters: bed If you don know what a three sisters bed is: it’s a traditional Native American planting technique where you plant corn beans and squash together. The corn acts as a trellis for the beans, so the beans can get up to the light. The beans form a symbiotic relationship with the Rhizobium bacteria in the soil and it allows them to pull their nitrogen from the air rather than from the soil, and it supplies that nitrogen to other plants in the soil, which means it does not compete.
With corn for nitrogen that you fertilize with and the squash in the three sisters, the bed acts as living mulch. It covers the base of the bed and prevents weeds from coming up and it shades the bed so that you’re preventing excess, evaporation of soil moisture. Those are all the main features that I built into this bed. There is one that I left out in my Gardening Without Irrigation video the other day, which is that I installed a miniature swale, basically a trench at the top of it.
This bed since, it is on a slope. That trench kind of catches, any water, that’s flowing down, the hill and slows it down, so it will sink in deeply underneath this bed and provide extra water. But those are all the main features, Let’s get on to how you actually prepare this thing: Woo That was a workout. Well, I’m gonna go in and have some lunch, but before I do, I’m gonna show you guys what I did here with the grub hoe. You can see that this isn’t really fine. It’s still a really really rough bunch, of really big dirt, and clods. This first pass was really just to create nice rough dust, mulch on top of this, and to get the weeds broken down.
Let this rest overnight and then I’ll come back through in the other direction. Do one more pass, break up the bigger clods, and create a really fine seed, bed and then I’ll be able to start shaping this bed for the next three sisters, patch Hey! I had to go. Take a quick break:
And put some moleskin on my hand’s hands are really starting to protest all of this digging even, though I’ve been doing this all season, and even though I have calluses on my hands at this point, I can still get blisters if I push too hard so take care of your hands. Make sure that they’re covered wear good gloves, use some moleskin if you need a little extra layer protection, and take a break if you’re doing just too much of it. The first bed that I did took six or seven days to complete, so don’t think! You can just rush through this and get one of these in a day or two, especially if you’re digging in this heavy clay. If you’ve got some nice, loam yeah sure you can probably bang out in a day but take your time and don’t be too hard on your body.
Let’s get back to this, Alright Second pass is done, and I don’t know how I’m editing this so that it’s not just a 30-minute video of me digging, but I hope you guys could tell how much less time and effort that second pass took than the first pass did yesterday. Just doing my first pass and letting it settle overnight softens up the soil, a lot and I’ll show you here in a second. What it looks like now but you can see how much finer and looser fluffier the soil is than it was when I showed it to you yesterday. Just wanna come and show you guys quickly what the soil looks like now that I’ve done, my second pass, I’m sure you can tell that it, is Much finer than it was yesterday there are still some big pieces like this right here: that’s fine We’re gonna end up raking a lot of this out when we’re shaping the bed and you actually want some of the bigger pieces along the edges to help hold its shape.
So this is the perfect texture right here, be lots of loose stuff to shape the beds with and then some larger pieces to give structure around the edges. Let’s go ahead and move on to that next step. Now, Alright for the next part of prepping, the three sisters. The bed here are the tools I use. This is just a sheet of cardboard two and a half feet.
Square that, I use a template for marking out the little pockets. Just, a regular garden hoe. If. You have a bow rake that’s narrow enough to rake out the sections that would probably work at least as well. If not better, I don’t have one that will work.
For that – And this is a Fokin hoe, which I like to use to trace around the cardboard. It’s not a super useful tool for using in heavy clay, but for marking furrows and tracing things. It works pretty well, Definitely not something, that’s necessary, not a tool I would necessarily recommend if you’re heavy clay soil, but I have it and it’s either that or I can go, find a stick. I don’t have a long, stick handy
So that’s what I’m going to use! I won’t really be able to film this part in a way where you can really see what I’m doing but I’ll see. If I can do it, one-handed do one little example and show you how it works. While the filming, So just take my hoe use a stick use whatever you have handy use a regular hoe if, you’re good with it, and I just mark out the edge of the bed the edge of this little pocket. So I can see where I need to shape it And it doesn’t have to be super exact.
Just make sure you can see it when you move the cardboard. I’m not sure if you can still see it in the video, but I can see it just fine and you’ll notice that I ran string around two edges of the bed. I squared it off. If you don’t know how to square off your beds you want to mark four feet on one length: of your string on the other edge mark three feet and you want them to be below. Want the hypotenuse to be five feet, so you can use it like a measuring tape or.
Another five-foot piece of string just pull your outside edges out just so that a string or measuring tape going from the four feet, marking on one side to the three-foot, marking on one side is, exactly five feet and that will square up your corners. I only do two sides of my bed because in my experience when you’re using the template it’s not going to end up being exact you’re gonna go a little bit over your edges. I only do the two and. I use that to line up my template and then I just use the beds that I’ve already created or the little pockets that I’ve already created to know where to put the template and then move along the bed I’ll see. If I can get part of this raked out. So you can kind of see how I do it, but uh not really going to be able to show you the whole process at this point. I’m sure you’re sick of watching you dig anyway.
So I’m not going to bother But basically, I just take from towards the middle, and these outside pockets, are always going to be the worst, at least for me, because It never digs quite deep enough along the edges, because I don’t want to hit my string. But you can probably see even here it’s a lot better than it is over here. So I might have to go with this. Go at this with the hoe a little bit more just to break it up, but once I get it done, there’ll be a nice little pocket.
I can plant my corn in. Alright, I’m gonna, get that done and then I’ll be back. Okay, guys, I’m wrapping up this first row here, As you might notice, I only have eight squares instead of the nine that I’m supposed to have. That’s the end of my string and that’s the template hanging off the end and like I said when you’re working with a template like this and dirt like this, it’s very unlikely you’re gonna, get it exactly the first time and in a situation like this, you can do one of two things
You can either just decide to extend the bed it’s not going to hurt anything. In fact, it’ll help a lot to have that little bit of extra room between plants, especially if you’re in a climate, that’s much drier than I am. Extra space is gon na help. The other thing to do is just push back this little divider in between the squares just a little bit to make a little bit of extra room, and I think that’s what I’m gonna end up doing with this one so that I don’t have to extend this little that. I’ve dug out because it’s pretty compacted and I don’t want to deal with it – I’m just gonna go ahead and lay the template down at the edge of the square I’m gonna have it going kind of up the side.
A little bit then I’ll just use my hoe to scoot the dirt back level, with that template and try to make enough room for that. I can fit one more little square in Alright. I scooted it down a little bit and then it was mostly fitting still hanging off by a few inches but since that’s where the soil is gonna be piled up, but the edge of the depression. I think that’s good enough for me now when I go through, and do the rest of the rows I’ll be able to use the lines that I’ve already created in this row as my guide so that they’re, all even all the way down and all I’m gonna do is finish. Forming this last little depression here and then I’m going through and putting some wood chip mulch in Every other spot, just as a holding place for the squash. I’ll get back to you and I’m done with this thing
Now, here’s the bed after it has been shaped. Now I mentioned that I was doing the woodchips every other spot as I made the rows and I think that’ll be obvious, and if it’s not it would be obvious, once you got to the end and realized you wouldn’t be able to get a wheelbarrow through all these little pockets without Destroying your work, If you do it row by row, you can do it with a wheelbarrow really easily, and that saves you from having to haul woodchips bucket by bucket to each of these little pockets. I still need to fertilize and, I still need to plant, but it’s getting late in the day. I don’t have much sunlight left, so I’m gonna save that for the morning, and I’ll show you guys what that looks like. Like. Alright, it’s the next morning.
I need to get this thing fertilized, So let me show you what the fertilizer situation is. This is my homemade organic fertilizer. It’s from Steve, Solomon’s Complete, Organic Fertilizer recipe. I’ve got links to his books in the description, Basically.
If the rooster will shut up. Basically, it’s a combination of a few different types of lime: some seed, meal seed meals, actually the bulk of it because that’s where the nitrogen comes from and I’ve got some rock dust in there.
The main recipe actually calls for kelp meal, but at $ 80 for a 50-pound bag that just wasn’t in my budget this year and he recommends rock dust as an alternative to that. Now. There are a few other random things that he recommends if you really want to go hardcore. A very very small amount of borax for the boron, that’s in there and a few other odds and ends Definitely recommend checking out his books. If you want to be able to mix up your own organic fertilizer,
Yes, we understand dude, nobody really cares.
This is basically similar. Really.
This is basically similar to kinds of your, like your Dr. Earth or the Jobe’s Organic fertilizers that you would pick up in the store. Those generally have like a few different bacterial and fungal inoculants in them, which this doesn’t have although, you could add them but this works out.
This works out to, I think is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cents, a pound or something like that and when you buy it, in the stores it’s closer to three or four dollars pound. So
If you can buy everything in bulk and mix up your own, this is way more economical than buying the organic fertilizer at the store I need about 30 quarts. To do our three sisters. Bed. He recommends 4-6 quarts per hundred square feet and our bed is just a little over 500 square.
How much exactly depends on what type of crop you’re growing The higher-end. The higher-end. If you don’t mind, the higher end is for your heavy feeding crops like corn squash, so since that’s, primarily what we’re growing I’m gonna be going with that He has specific recommendations by crop.
He has specific recommendations by crop in his book, so you can go ahead and pick that up. If you want something a little more exact than the directions, I’m giving you here. Let’s go ahead, and measure this out and apply it and hopefully, we’ll get a little bit of a break from the rooster. Here’s. this plastic tub that I like measuring out fertilizer into just so that when I’m working in any particular spot, I can measure out the exact amount
I need and then go ahead and take it out, to the garden, to apply it. Let’s see, we’ve got five hundred square feet here, like I mentioned well it’s five hundred and six feet and change and because I’ve already covered up every other hole with woodchips. I go ahead and divide the fertilizer by 41, which is the number of planting spaces we have for corn, and then apply it Just to the corn figuring that the squash roots are going, make it into those areas anyway and they’ll be able to get their fertilizer once they get there. One other thing I expect to happen because of that is, that the corn will get a little bit of a head start and it’ll help get it up above the squash before the squash really takes over this area.
So it’s 30 quarts for this entire bed and that works out to about a pint and a half per square, so literally just measure out your pint sprinkle it on the hole and grab another half eyeballing it’s fine. Steve Solomon designed this fertilizer so that you Can’t really over-apply it. It’s a really gentle mix. It’s gonna really help your veggies out, but it’s gonna be really hard To overdo It.
Let me go grab the tool I like to use. Real, quick, and I’ll. Show you how I mix this in Alright. I went and got this tool here brand name is Hounddog. I think I’ve seen other brands before I think they’re sold assoil aerators. I like to use it. If I need to mix something in so that I’m only disturbing a very small amount of space with it,
It’s basically kind of like a spiral fork and you stick it into the ground and twist and it’ll mix stuff in I’m gonna see if I can get a shot of using it, but I don’t have a tripod so I’ll see if I can prop my phone up. So that you guys could see what it does Alright. So what you’re gonna do is just stick this in the ground and give it a twist. Because this is heavy clay. It’s gonna fight you a bit, although once you get it started, it usually goes pretty easy, Sometimes I’ll give it, a little push with my foot just to get the tines in there and get them started and then I find rocking back and forth really helps a lot.
You don’t need to mix it a whole lot. You just want it to mix with the soil so that it’ll break down and be available to the plants. Sometimes going at a bit of an angle helps Alright. Here’s the first one done. You don’t really, need to get the stuff. That’s here, around the edges When it rains that stuff will wash right in And all I did down here is I pushed some of these larger clods that weren’t breaking down towards the edge and left all this really fine stuff.
In the middle for planting in and now, I just have to do that 40 more times, Let’s do it. I Just want to get a quick shot of the bed. Now that I’ve got the fertilizer in it not because I need to, but just because I think it looks cool. This contrast, between the fertilizers and the woodchips, really brings out the namesake of the bed The Checkerboard Bed. One quick note is to wear a mask when you’re applying this stuff. It’s not toxic, but it is a very, very finely ground rock. Basically, so you don’t want to be breathing that stuff in. It’ll Be hell on your lungs Same goes when you’re applying the woodchips. They aren’t finely ground, but they do tend to be a breeding ground for fungus and if your pile isn’t extremely wet, it’ll kick up a bunch of spores, and trust me.
I’ve spread woodchips once without a mask and I definitely regretted it the next day. Don’t make the same mistake. A quick note on other amendments. I don’t have a post this year just because it’s my first year growing in this large of a space, and I can produce that much yet. If you have compost or if you can buy in compost, I would go ahead and put a quarter to half an inch in each of the holes, I’d apply it to the corn depressions as I’m adding the fertilizer, and I would throw some in before I put woodchips down for the squash. Another thing that I use quite a lot – is nettle tea.
You can find lot of videos on that. I might do one in the future but I usually apply that as a foliar spray things get growing. Sometimes when I first plant things I’ll do a soil drench with it really, quick.
That helps compact the soil around the seeds and make sure that the roots can get into the soil really. Well, Those are the main things that I use and. If you have them available, I would definitely add some of those on top of just the fertilizer. If. You can’t get the fertilizer
I would definitely use some compost at the very least. The bed is prepped and it’s time to plant the seeds, And one thing that I like to do. If I’m planting either at a time of year when the soil is too cold, for the seeds to germinate or if I’m planting when there’s not going to be any rain in the forecast, there might not be enough soil. Moisture for the seeds to germinate is to go ahead and pre — germinate those seeds.
There are a few different methods that you can use. You can use a sprouting jar like you would use if you were growing sprouts to eat The method that I went ahead and used this time, and one of my favorite methods is to just roll up your seeds in the moist paper. Towel. Stick them in a plastic container or a plastic bag with a top cracked so that the air can exchange and then just check them every day For the roots to emerge.
Let me show you an example of what that looks like Here’s an example of what the seeds will look like after they germinate when you’re pre-germinating them This seed right here is what it should look like The roots should just barely be peeking out of the seed. That way, it won’t be long and fragile and there’s no risk of you breaking it. I underestimated how much time it was gon na take me to get this bed prepared, and I ended up with a bunch of seeds like this
You don’t want this. This root is way too long. The risk of breaking is really high. In fact, this one you probably can’t tell but it broke off and it may survive, but there’s a very good chance that this seed will die now that the root is damaged. I’m gonna go ahead and stick it in the ground and see what happens, but definitely aim for this guy right here
It should pop out within maybe two or three days and that’ll be the perfect time to plant it. Now in each of these squares, you’re going to want to plant five seeds, one in each corner and one in the very center. What I like to do, when I come out to the garden, is to keep my seeds wrapped in a moist paper towel and then just open them up as. I pull out each seed to plant In this case because I’ve got around 200 seeds here I went ahead and kept them in a plastic container. Just to help hold some moisture in because the paper towel would dry out before I’d be able to plant it all.
What you want to do, I just use a trusty little screwdriver here to kind of clear some of the loose stuff around the top out of the way and then drive it in and give it a little twirl pull it out, Hopefully without dropping any soil down in there and Fill in my hole back up and then take your seed drop it in trying to get it to root down just so that the roots going the right way from the start fill it back in and that is it Do it four more times again once in each corner, because I already Got the one in the center and then move on to the next square. Okay, next I’m gonna show you how to do the squash seeds.
It’s more or less the same process, but there’ll be one difference because we got the wood mulch here. One point that I want to make real quick before. I do the squash seed is that if you do end up with any of those seeds that get away from you and have the really long root you can still plant them they’ll probably make it. You just got to be very very gentle with it make sure you make a nice big hole with lots of loose dirt and get it in really gently try to make sure its root is facing down. And if there’s a sprout starting to form like there is on some of my corn seeds, make sure, that’s pointed up and just be very gentle with it and hope for the best, because that’s all you can really do once they get that ahead of you.
Kay Squash, Because we have the wood mulch here and, one of the whole points of the wood mulch is that. It is a weed suppression.
Well, you don’t want to suppress your own seeds from sprouting. So what you got ta do is pull back some of this mulch from the center to make a spot to plant the seed. You see that Just like that, pull the mulch back, get back down to the soil. Now, its basically the same as it was for the corn. Let me pull one of my squash seeds out of my container here Here we go Squash seed. You can see, it’s got, the root tip coming out right there, That’s a good size! If you can get it at that length.
Watch them every day try to make sure your bed’s ready so you can get them in when they’re at this length, and that’ll be perfect. A handy dandy, screwdriver again Just make a hole, and the nice thing about the squash squares is that this mulch is going to hold. A lot of moisture in, don’t know if you can tell quite how moist this soil it’s a lot easier to get the soil to stay where you want it and it’s a lot easier to ensure that the seed has enough moisture to actually sprout Go ahead and drop that down in The hole I made cover it up loosely and that’s it. Don’t pull the mulch back overleave it open in the center just like this, and once the seed sprouts and you’ve got a nice little plant going, then you can pull the mulch back in around The plant to hold the moisture in and keep the weeds out
There are a couple of points that I need to hit on while we’re on the subject of planting seeds. Typically in three sisters. Bed like this, you would do not plant your corn beans and squash all at the same time.
You would plant your corn first and then? You would wait until the corn reaches about a foot high and then come through and plant your beans and squash, the reason being that, if you planted all three at the same time, the corn would not be tall enough by the time the beans and the squash really took off, and it Would end up getting either, shaded out or completely pushed over by the larger squash and bean plants, So typically I’ve found that the corn will go in and then it’ll take it.
In our climate, it’ll take three to four weeks for the corn to be tall enough and then you can finally put in your squash and beans. Now. I did make a point earlier that I’m only putting fertilizer in the corn spots in the hopes that it’ll give corn a little extra boost and the squash will catch up to it later. That’s going to be especially important on this bed, because I am running really late in the season and I really need to get a second bed planted, so I’m gonna end up putting in squash and corn at the same time, as you just saw, I’m hoping it works out but. It’s not a guarantee.
Iven the choice I would always plant, the corn first and then wait to plant the beans and the squash. The other thing that I need to point out is that I have set up this bed so that around the outside, all of the squares on the outside that contain squash, actually contain summer squash, I’m planting Early Prolific Yellow squash, but any kind of summer squash like your zucchinis or your patty-pans that’s. What I’m planting around the outside, just because I’m going to be planting them anyway? I don’t want to dedicate a row and my main garden to them. And planting them around the outside means that the plants will still be accessible when this bed is fully mature. Also, I have been planting my summer squash at the same time as the corn, because summer squashes are bush varieties, not vining varieties.
O It won’t really be the case that these squash are gonna sprawl everywhere and overtake the corn. Another thing I need to mention, and it’s a bit of a sticking point most seed catalogs, don’t mention whether they winter. Squash varieties are climbing or trailing and that is very, very important. when you’re doing a bed like this
You need a trailing squash and the only way to figure out what you have is probably to experiment or ask. People who have already grown that variety. The reason: you need a trailing squash and not a climbing squash is because, if you choose a climbing variety it is going to climb up your corn and it is going to – pull your corn over, and then you will not get corn. If you can find a seed catalog that tells you whether the squash is climbing or trailing that’s perfect, Most of them do not Ask around. Do your research or just be prepared to face the fact that your squash might decimate your corn. One last thing is about the corn varieties.
That you grow a Three sisters. Bed is about growing staple crops. The whole point of this bed is to grow enough. Calories to feed a person for a year. What you need is either flour, corn, or flint corn. This isn’t the place to plant your sweetcorn, because you will not be able to access this bed to harvest It.
His point is to let this bed grow to maturity When the corn dries when the squash matures when the beans dry, then you go through and harvest all of it. The reason that I’m recommending flour corn or flint corn and not dent corn, comes from legendary plant breeder Carol Deppe. If you read her book The Resilient Gardener, which I have a link to down in the description, she gives a brilliant write-up about. The differences between those three types of corn, a flour, corn, and flint corn, have two very different types of starches. One of them cooks under dry cooking conditions. Like baking, the other cooks under moist, cooking, conditions like boiling
They are polar opposites, A dent corn becomes dent corn because it is across of a flour corn and flint corn and has 50/50 one starch and the other That corn will not cook properly, because it’s going to need to be boiled and baked in order to cook. All of the way through, Like I said Carol, has a great write-up. She makes a point about how the way most people are instructed to make things like polenta, grits, and things like that, encourages people, to boil their dish and then bake it, and it’s because most people are using dent corns. It’s a very long process.
It takes like 40 plus minutes to make a dish of polenta doing it with dent corn. If You select corn that is meant to be boiled and only boiled. Then it’s a 10-minute process tops So choose a flour: corn choose a flint corn.
Do not choose a dent Corn. Do, not plant sweet corn in your three sisters, beds. One last thing:
Which I forgot. One last thing about flint and flour corns. Now, typically flint corns are a southern adapted variety and they’ll get eight-plus feet tall. Flour corn varieties were grown by northern tribes and they were adapted to northern climates. And they typically only get four to five feet tall.
Why Is that important? Well, the whole point of a three-sisters bed is that the corn acts as a trellis for the beans. If you’re growing acorn, that only gets four to five feet tall, it is not going to act as a trellis for our bean that wants to climb eight to ten feet. Alternatively. If you’re growing, flint corn that gets eight to ten feet tall you’re wasting a ton of space by growing a half-runner type of bean that will only get four or five feet tall: Choose your corn and beans to match each other.
The point that I’m trying to make here and further, what I like to do is choose a good dual-purpose bean. What I mean by that is a bean. That is excellent as a green bean but will also make a really really excellent dry bean. That way, you aren’t growing multiple varieties of beans, you have one bean planted throughout your whole bed and you can pick green beans from around the outside of the bed, and then when the season is over and all of the beans dry you can go through and harvest all of the dry Beans for use as dry beans. The ones that I’ve settled for. That purpose is Kentucky Wonder Honestly the first year that I grew as a dry bean it was completely by accident. I planted way more plants than I could harvest green beans from I got sick of picking them. I let them go at the end of the season. I went through and picked all the dry beans to save seeds for the next season and I had way more than I needed in order to plant for the next season. So I ended up cooking up the rest. They were
They were the best beans I have ever tasted, It’s the best argument. I’ve ever seen for growing your own beans, Most people say: don’t bother. Growing dry beans Beans are cheap, Cheap beans, taste cheap. Grow, your own beans They’re way better. Grow, a good dual-purpose bean. So you can get green beans and dry beans and choose your corn and beans. To match Choose flint corn and a regular pole. Bean if, you want tall varieties and you have a climate that
Will support tall varieties choose flour corn and a half runner bean if you need short varieties for a short or cooler season? Since I won’t be planting beans in my new bed today I want to come over and show you how they’re developing in my first bed So like I said when The corn reaches about a foot high then go ahead and come on through and plant your beans. I haven’t decided yet on an exact number that is appropriate for this kind of planting. This bed was set up this year. I went ahead and planted four beans Per corn stalk.
You can kind of see for beans popping up there and go ahead and give four beans a try this year and see how it goes, but last somewhere between, two and four beans per corn stalk. Now, if you aren’t saving your own seeds, that is going to be difficult, because this bed will have just over 200 corn plants in it, and that means you would need 800 beans. If you’re doing four per, You can get away with 400 beans if you’re only doing two per plant, but in either case, it means you’re, either going to have to buy your seeds in bulk, which is sometimes an option depending on who you buy your seeds from. The alternative is the season before you plan.
To put this bed in save seeds from all of your beans, I think I’ve planted, just over 600 beans in this bed, and that was from saving about a pound of beans. Give or take from my previous crop And that’s only because as you’re going to find out. If you plant exactly one packet of corn, that will fill this bed, but you will not get 100 % germination. I got about, 75 percent germination. So if I had gotten100 % and I planted four beans per plant, that would have been 800 plants. I only ended up with, seventy-five percent germination and ended up planting six hundred beans four around each stalk
Well, the bed is planted now and that is it for this video. I just wanted to mention a few last things about the bed and then some housekeeping stuff, and then our time together will be over. I did mention that you want to be planting flour or, flint corn. In this bed, not sweet corn, But I did not mention that you can pick your flour and flint corns, immature, and use it just like you would sweet corn. What you want to do is pick it in the milk stage, just like you would, if you were picking sweet corn, While it’s still green.
If you puncture around the kernels, some kind of milky fluid will come out it’s a perfect time to pick it Then you can roast it up and eat it just like you would sweet corn, It won’t be sweet as sweet corn, but it’ll still be delicious It’ll probably have a more complex flavor than what you’re used to getting in sweet corn, which is just kind of sweet and doesn’t have a lot of other flavors going on One other thing. I want to mention is about climate. In my climate. It’s warm humid and dry during the summer, but it rains the rest of the year, so this bed helps store water underneath it, for when we go through our drought season. If you are in a climate where it’s hot and dry pretty much year-round. You might need more spacing.
Then this bed allows The Hopi Native Americans from kind of Arizona New Mexico parts and California.
They typically plant their corn six to seven feet apart in clumps, so with this design, you might need to either make the squares more like five or six feet rather than two and a half feet or you might need to add a little bit of irrigation just to supplement whatever rainfall. You do end up getting, but that’s something you’re just gonna kind of have to experiment with and figure out, what works in your climate. If you have to irrigate it’s not that big of a deal. The way this bed is set up you have to irrigate less than you.
Would if you didn’t set it up this way, so that’s still a win, even if it’s not 100 % without irrigation. In your climate, The other thing is, if you live in a climate, where you get monsoon rains during the summer, which I discovered is the case for parts of the U.S Southwest, which I did not realize when I started buying corn varieties that were native to there.
You might not want the depression because it might capture too much water and cause root rot, But again that’s something you’re gonna have to experiment with in your climate and figure out. You might just dig one little depression, for one season and stick a few seeds in there and see. If they end up being able to survive, with that amount of irrigation or if it’s too much, too little, or just kind of figure out what works in your climate. But, that’s all I can really think about as far as the actual bed goes. If you guys have any questions, throw them down, below and I’ll happily respond to anything.
You guys want to know about this thing Everything else is kind of housekeeping stuff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone that watched all the way through. I know this was a long one and thank you to everyone that’s subscribed after my last video. I was not expecting that many for my first, video. It’s still a long shot from being at the top by YouTube standards, but it means a lot to me that many of you guys are on board for the kind of stuff that I’m doing out here. I know that the audio isn’t that great.
We don’t have enough solar for me to run my computer, so I’m having to film and edit this100 % on my phone. Unfortunately, I don’t have an external mic and can’t afford one. So that’s kind of just how it is for right now, So I appreciate you guys sticking through it. In spite of all the audio issues and whatever video issues there are, I was able to bum a tripod off of a friend halfway through filming this so hopefully, the quality of the shots improves slightly over the next few videos and I’m certainly getting a lot more comfortable talking to no one so hopefully, it’s a little less awkward from here on out. Oh Links,
One of the other things that are a problem with doing this all on my phone is that YouTube does not allow you to add subtitles, which I’d like to do, because my mother is deaf and won’t, be able to watch any of my videos and the other thing. You cannot do from mobile is add, links to other videos within your video, so I’ve got links below to my last video on gardening without irrigation, which I mentioned earlier in the video and also in David, the Good’s live stream the other day. He took my comment and turned it into his outro song, and I linked it to that timestamp in The video, because I thought was hilarious, and I would love for you guys to go check it out.
And tell him that the Stoned Ape Farmer sent you I also left links in the description to all of the books that I mentioned in this video plus a few of, the others that I really recommend. Thanks for checking those out thanks for checking the other videos out thanks for sticking with me this long. It’s been an adventure and I’m glad you guys were here for it Until next time.
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