George Shirley wrote:
....
When I was a boy my father always planted corn, then climbing beans,
then squash, all in the same spot. It was called the "Three Sisters,"
the beans climbed the corn, the squash shaded the roots for all of them.
Dad was half Choctaw, I suppose that planting came from his ancestors.
It worked pretty good in SE Texas.

for freshly flooded river bottoms it was a common
succession planting technique.

more recent experimentation in another climate
uses white clover in combination with rice to
perpetually farm an area. the clover is flooded
to weaken it before the rice is planted and then
it all goes forwards until harvest. after harvest
all stalks are returned the field and the clover
grows until the next rice planting is due, then
flooded again...

there are many ways to do things. many
combinations or ways to interplant and to
grow and harvest. i'd never want to get
stuck with doing the same thing all the time.

yesterday i was out in the back patch digging
up green garlic and eating it while weeding it
from that area. weeds and food. yummy stuff.
i'm about half done. rains and cold today.
also had to get the thistles out of there as
those are no fun to find when walking or
weeding.

the strawberries along one edge will make
their way further into that patch this year.
i'm looking forwards to getting some berries
from the plants that have already established
themselves.

the whole patch is starting to get more
weeds in it and because grasses are hard to
remove from around the roots of alfalfa and
trefoil some areas will be either dug up and
turned over and grass roots removed and planted
with other things or i will let the grass grow
and just keep it from going to seed until i
can decide what else to do with the area. i
still need some of it for green manure so i
won't turn it all under.

the soil back there continues to improve
as i keep chopping it back and letting the worms
work on it.

free food for not too much labor. i'll probably
spend a few days total on the whole area this
year weeding, playing, planting and of course
getting more garlic out of there.

i have mostly finished the path removal project
and took a few pics of the new garden space that
was reclaimed from the pennyroyal and the pathway.
should get those posted sometime... i'm not
sleepy yet so now is as good a time as any. be
back with links in a while...


songbird