This Unique Three Sisters Planting Layout Produces All Of His Food 

Could you elaborate on how you accomplished this? Did you ever lose harvest to thieves? Did anyone ever try to kick you out?

That's great! And understandable why you only did it for 4 years. Solid advice that I definitely came to through trail and error. Figuring out what I could get away with not doing was huge. Definitely tried to do too much the first couple years... but that was also an important part of figuring out what would work on this site and what wouldn't. Can't sing the praises of corn enough! Thanks for watching and sharing all of your great advice! 😁

Thanks 🙏

Oh yeah! I was working on a similar long term strategy, but it was too much digging for the immediate return of food I was getting. Now that I have the food situation under control I'll probably check on the section I was able to finish and see how it's coming along. See if there are good spots do do more. Maybe work them into my contour work. Only problem was that there wasn't organic matter out here to speak of for the first 3 years, since the landowners had the place clear cut and scraped. That little bit that did pop up was immediately eaten by something. Not even enough greens to forage to keep from getting a vitamin C deficiency that first year when the deer ate all of my greens. At least now I have a good stand of thistles and an improving stand of grass that I can cut for mulch, and perennials starting to get established slowly. Thanks for watching, and thanks for sharing you story! It confirms that what I expected would work has at least worked for someone!

Yeah. Everything close had unfortunately been clear cut and all the good soil and organic matter washed away. But I have occasionally brought in little handfuls of healthy soil from here and there to inoculate things. Definitely great ideas!

Instead of the stick, you could just make a quick pass through with a rice knife or similar high control cutting tool {scythe not advised, maybe if you're a scythe master 😂} and cut them back. The material on the ground is good for the soil and it feels a lot faster than staking to me

Glad you enjoyed it! That was a rough season (had three really rough seasons in a row.) The corn did wonderfully. The squash I had to plant three times because we had such a long, cold, wet season. The first two plantings rotted in the ground. The third just didn't have time to do anything. The beans were doing great until the deer found them. Didn't kill them completely, but they just didn't have time to recover before we got a freeze. The generation of corn that I grew this year from that original seed that I saved was absolutely phenomenal. The largest cobs were about double the weight. Here's one of my subscriber-only videos that shares part of my corn harvest from this year: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wiVLR5scVR4.htmlsi=pbTWNmgga8Vd6l5S

How did your 6 sisters work out? I experimented with melons (watermelon and otherwise) this year, but it's gonna take a minute to breed and select for stuff that tolerates our summer temperature swings.

@stonedapefarmer turns out that land had a huge herd of deer. Over 100 strong. Everything that came up was eaten to the ground. Not a scrap of it remained.

Oof. That's rough. That's basically what the first two years out here were like. Just planting stuff for the deer. They finally chilled out this year. Any luck of that happening there? I'm guessing it's a pretty persistent herd for it to get up to that size.

@stonedapefarmer I am going to rent from a friend who has land and they actively hunt every year. Gonna try a 3d electric fence as well. On my small backyard plot I will be fencing it as well come spring with black plastic deer netting that will be 8 or 9ft high. I've never been able to grow sweet potatoes, peanuts, or any dry beans because of deer in my urban backyard. Hopefully the 8ft deer net will keep them out and on the rural rented land the electric 3d fence and dogs will keep the deer at bay for the corn crop.

They really are some of my favorite gardening books! Glad you enjoyed the video! 😁

Yeah. Last year was a mess, and wildfires finally did me in on top of the constant deer pressure and everything else. There were definitely some lessons amongst the chaos. Trying to get all my ducks in a row for this season so I don't have a repeat of the last one, then going I can carve out some space for more video-making. And yeah. It's a heck of a slope. I've got some ideas bouncing around in my head about how to construct some low labor terraces, plus I'm looking at replicating some of the technologies utilized by indigenous North and South Americans (and other people around the world) to transport goods across hilly terrain.

Thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm glad you enjoyed. If you ever find that magic wand... 😂

Thanks! I'm glad you got something useful out of it! I've certainly been learning a lot from you as well. 🙂

Same.

Thanks! I've definitely used chicken feathers and dog fur and any number of other things. Whatever I can get my hands on. As long as it rots, it has mulch potential.

Glad you enjoyed it!

I just came to check and see if this had finished uploading yet. Guess that answers my question! 😂

Hey buddy :) much love

A lot of people hear that you can plant these 3 crops together and just do it without any regard for timing. Some of them get lucky and it works (there's so much variability with varieties and planting methods/spacing), but I see a lot more posting that it simply doesn't work. I'm glad you put squash in last, and I hope you end up getting great yields!

@@stonedapefarmer i planted everything at the same time but i had to start my corn inside in pots so it was much taller then the squash and bean seeds which were not even sprouted yet Its working well for me The corn has its feet covered and seems much stronger than if i planted corn alone Its a learning experience for me this year but i can see how well it can work

@@wildedibles819 That's great! Yeah. The corn having a head start is the important thing. Sounds like that should work out for you!

@@stonedapefarmer ya its looking healthy ...your friend there is interesting :) we have crab apples fruiting now after 8 years its full of fruit this year We planted lots of crab apple cores From a crab apple that was growing beside another crab apple So we have some interesting trees that are very hardy

@@wildedibles819 There are old domesticated apples out here that I inherited when I became the steward of this land. I've slowly been pruning them back into a manageable size and shape... and feeding all the wormy apples to the chickens to try to get the pest population under control. I think this'll be the first year that I get more than a couple soft/mealy apples off of them. The wild strawberries growing around the base of the trees have certainly appreciated all of the extra attention I've been giving this area. This is the first year I've actually seen them produce fruit since I've been out here. This whole time I thought it was just a weird variety of strawberry I didn't know about that just didn't produce fruit...

Hope you've been managing without. It certainly makes things tougher!

Thank you! Glad you found it helpful!

I'm glad you think so! One of the things that compelled me to start making videos is that I have perspectives and experiences that I really haven't seen anyone else sharing. I'm just hoping that people find those things valuable.

@@stonedapefarmer ya ive never seen a video with this much information on how to plant them All the videos I've seen plant everything at once we were having spring frosts and i have a short season so now i know i can plant corn 5 to a 4inch pot and they dont mind for a couple weeks and i can grow corn

@@wildedibles819 Have you experimented with soil blocks? They don't disturb the roots like starting things in regular pots do because they're open to the air and keep the roots from just spiraling around inside the pot. I know that corn doesn't like having it's roots disturbed, and the soil blocks could help in that regard. I've never done corn in the soil blocks, but I've considered it as an experiment to try to get a super early crop of corn. And since I'll be saving seeds from my own corn this year, next season might be a good time to experiment with it. Especially since I think I want to devote these beds entirely to my flint corn next year and move my flour corn to it's own space.

@@stonedapefarmer no i have so many plastic pots saved...i tried to put them out as soon as i thought the last frost was over... anyway it was a light frost and they pulled through Ive seen how good fabric pots work soil blocks large ones would work...i had roots coming out the bottom but they still took off ok I used mulch around them too and spread the roots out some to hold them up good The strong ones didnt mind one bit Also this lets you know which ones are weaker plants some you might not want out We planted 4 different corn beds away from each other have beans and squash around them all so we will take notes lol My winter squash can be trained away and i will be able to reach all sides of the bed 6feet square aprox I don't have big beds but trying to grow something in a small yard... experimenting is what i enjoy doing I couldn't find any details on 3 sisters and my native American friend explained the basics So see how things go Im glad we met its great to have these ideas around more

I'm glad we did too! It's been such a pleasure chatting with you! I can tell that were trying to strike that healthy balance with the natural world, and those are exactly the kind of people I want to be surrounded by!

Very interesting. I used alfalfa pellets meant for horses last year as a side dressing fertilizer for the plants and they all thrived.

Hey! Just got Internet access back, so getting things caught up. This layout was mostly successful... We had a very long, cold, wet spring and all the squash ended up rotting in the ground. Did the separate plantings and bring matured by the time we got frost. And the deer ended up hitting the beans really hard, and they never quite recovered. But the corn did great in spite of it all and produced an awesome harvest. I think the major downside, since I wasn't able to get a steady supply of wood chips or other mulch out here, is that keeping weeds under control with this design was a bit challenging. But if you could mulch it heavily, it'd work great. This year I switched to a Hopi style of growing corn in clumps of 10+ plants on a much wider spacing, and I liked that a lot more for my purposes. Better pollination, better wind resistance, and seems to be a bit better protected from the wildlife, especially with squash being allowed to sprawl in between (as long as your varieties aren't aggressive climbers, which a few of mine were.) I, personally, wouldn't do the checkerboard design again given my context... which is lots of space but few resources. If you have limited space and a good supply of mulch, though, it'd be a great option.

@@stonedapefarmer Since you have lots of space, here's how I'd recommend a squash patch setup with minimal fertility on bad soil. It's a method I saw on David the Good, based on Steve Solomon's method and how indigenous people used to grow. Dig a hole 1-2ft deep, put in manure, fish guts, food scraps, etc, at the bottom, then fill it back up with the original dirt, making a slight mound. If your season is long enough direct sow the squash when it's warm and dry. If not transplant seedlings. The roots will find the food, which is very high fertility, but can still sprawl around it if it's too hot/rich. The result is you don't have to feed them all summer, just keep them watered and mulched well. If you space them far enough away then the dry farming thing kicks in to some degree. For weeds, just cover the space between the plants with plastic mulch and let the vines crowl over it. They'll appreciate the extra heat from the black plastic, and by next year most of the weeds should be gone if you want to pull the plastic to store or use elsewhere. Protect the seedlings when they're young, from slugs, rabbits, deer, etc, with a simple cover of some kind. If you cover with clear plastic or a jug, make sure it has holes for ventilation so they don't cook on a sunny day. Prevent squash vine borer from killing it by wrapping some flexible athletic wrap (super cheap) from the dirt up the base stem about 6-8". It'll prevent the squash vine borer from getting into the stem and killing the plant, but can stretch as the plant grows so won't cause any issues.

Finally had a good year and am able to get everything I need from the garden, but amaranth and potatoes have still struggled to produce in my conditions. They're getting better each year, but not enough to give them too much space. I produced maybe a pound of amaranth total this year. It's good seed, but not enough for eating yet. This coming season I expect will be a good one for both potatoes and amaranth. Things are finally starting to click!

I posted updates on Permies, but didn't do a video. I lost the entire garden with the wild fires last year, so there wasn't anything to harvest. Lost my cat at the same time, my dog was in heat, lots of stress prepping for evacuation, etc. Hence the 8 or so month hiatus from making videos. Squash was a total failure in our region last year... winter squash is a big commercial crop here, but nothing was able to mature because our season was cold and wet for so long. Was weird to go into stores in the fall and not see the huge squash displays. I had to plant squash 3 times because the first two rounds of seed rotted in the ground. Beans were all infected with mosaic virus. By the time I could get back out into the garden after the smoke cleared I only had about 60 ears of corn left. No beans or squash at all. I've gotta give the beds a rest for at least a year or two to let the disease clear out and then I want to do a proper second run with harvest and yields. But I did extrapolate out from the 60 ears of corn I was able to harvest that my numbers for corn would have been spot on if I hadn't lost most of it in the chaos.

@@stonedapefarmer Thanks for your reply. That was devastating, so sorry for your loss bro. I'm just now seeing your videos. That makes my problems seem trivial. I especially like the idea of capturing the water for the plants. Hopefully this year will be a success 🍀

@@heterodox3487 I hope so! For both of us! I definitely have a better game plan this year and I'm getting lots of stuff in the ground each week. Behind on some stuff, but light years ahead of where I was last year.

​@@stonedapefarmermore like a 2 year Hiatus. Hope you're doing well 💞

@@priestesslucy3299 Thanks! Our Berkey failed without us realizing, so I ended up getting pretty severe heavy metal poisoning from drinking effectively unfiltered well water. Plus, caught long covid from the landowner, lost my best friend, had my computer blow up, and was finally starting to suffer from the beginning stages of several old-timey diseases due to malnutrition from all the crop failures I experienced due to wildlife, disease, drought, wildfire, and sickness. (Scurvy from lack of greens/fruit, beriberi from the high proportion of rice in my diet, and goiter because the 25 pound sacks of salt I got to preserve things didn't have iodine.) Definitely hit my dark night if the soul. I'm recovering. Have learned a lot of lessons. Have grown and developed better systems. Have some help that I needed but didn't have previously. But I've had to pare back a lot just to allow my body to recover and focus on the basics. If you check out my community tab, I've been posting occasional pictures to show the progress this year. Other than the rough state that my body is in, this year is going pretty well. Certainly a welcome change to all the struggle and adversity of the last few years. My mind and body are definitely grateful for the wins. 🙂

We're too cold here, so we can only get through one round of staple crops here. Our warm season is just long enough that I can (theoretically) grow two types of corn, as long as I have enough time between plantings that they don't flower at the same, but I can't get two crops out of the same space. We've got about 4 good months of corn growing weather, if we're lucky. I might be able to grow some cold tolerant crops over the winter, but by the time I harvest everything from this bed, there won't be many things that I can plant without transplanting, which is generally a no-no in dry gardening, but probably less of an issue during the fall and winter season, since that's our wet season anyway. That one's just an issue for us on account of not having running water or a dedicated space and resources for raising transplants. If you have the time, fertility, and climate that will support succession plantings in these beds, then go for it! And I still have the kitchen garden in addition to these beds, for growing all of our other (mostly non-staple) vegetables. That that does get succession planted. At least, in theory. This year, most of my time and energy went into preparing the garden, so by the time I needed to plant something else, I had just prepared another row. Next year I'll be ramping up production in the kitchen garden, so I'll be planting more of each crop and there will be more succession planting. Though, there have been challenges this year that may have really cut down on the ability to succession plant this year. It's been exceptionally cold this year (we just got back down into the the 40s Fahrenheit a couple weeks ago, and it's summer!) Plus, I haven't built up the soil fertility out here yet. I haven't had income for about 4 months at this point, so I was pretty limited on how much fertility I could buy in, and my compost system is just starting to crank out enough that I should have enough for this next year. It'll get there, just not this year. And those factors combined have meant that the turnips have taken about 4 months to start sizing up, instead of the 2 it should have taken, so that would cause issues with succession. I did attempt to succession plant amaranth with my root crops with the expectation that the root crops would come out sooner than they have. The plants which are not interplanted with root crops are doing fine. The ones interplanted with root crops are severely stunted. It's the first time I've attempted such a succession in a dry gardening scenario, and there's certainly a learning curve to it. I assumed I'd have enough time to get the root crops out of the ground before the amaranth needed the water, but I was definitely wrong. I've added that to my list of lessons for next year. Overall, until I finish putting in the rest of my water saving features, succession planting in a dry gardening context may just not be that successful. Once everything's set up, and I can stop digging the soil, and start ramping up fertility, I suspect things will really take off. I always expect it to take 3-5 years before a new garden will really pop. Unless you're Elaine Ingham and can analyze the heck out of your soil microbiology to fine tune it. And to be clear, we're talking dry beans, field corn, and winter squash here. No pickling or "preserving" involved. The beans and corn both dry on the plant (this is corn for making cornbread, tortillas, polenta, grits, tamales, hoe cakes, etc... though, you can eat it like sweet corn when you pick it young.) The squash, if properly cured, will store in a fresh state for months (these are like your butternuts, hubbards, etc.) In fact, in the trials that Oregon State University has done on dry farming winter squash, they've found that the storage life has about doubled in the unirrigated crops because of the lower relative moisture. I've seen some reports of squash storing in their fresh state for 18+ months (though, you can always freeze or can if it doesn't look like it's going to last that long.) Now, I AM doing a yellow summer squash around the outside of the bed for fresh eating. That works out to 16 plants, which might turn out to be excessive. I plan on pickling a bunch and putting some up for zucchini bread on top of what I eat fresh, plus I'll need to leave some on for seed production, but if that's still too many plants, I'll end up replacing some of those with more winter squash for next year. But, at the end of the day, anything that's "excess" becomes chicken food, and cuts down on how much feed needs to be bought in. I'm working towards getting us to a closed loop, so that all of our chicken food is produced on site. For now, however much I can cut back on commercial feed is a win. As far as paths through the bed? I don't see any major reasons why one shouldn't put in paths if the additional space is available. I'd probably dig them out shallowly and fill them with mulch so they can act as additional water catchment. Or hell, install hugelpaths like I talk about in my other video. As long as you're mindful of keeping corn planted densely enough for good pollination, and you're mindful of how any changes might affect water catchment, then there are plenty of little experiments you could do with this design. I talked with someone about doing a similar design along swales on contour. I'd love to see all of these modifications and see how we can, collectively, continue to improve this thing.

@@stonedapefarmer a thorough and informative reply haha! I guess the paths would be more for your kitchen garden, I don't see why the checker-board would be limited to only three sisters, looks like it would be a good approach for many things. looking forward to seeing where you take it. Its 1 am here so time for me to stop binging youtube O.o

@@couldyoucook3085 Oh yeah. The overall design features would work anywhere. This particular setup is more about maximizing space by grouping things that would all get harvested late summer/early fall (plus all the other benefits of a three sisters bed), so you can get away with not having paths. It's a little more labor intensive to construct, so that's the main reason I didn't use it elsewhere in the garden this year. Totally could, though. Just have to keep in mind that different crops prefer different spacing if they're not being irrigated, so you might need fewer large squares for things like brassicas, cucurbits, and nightshades; more and smaller squares for things like lettuce; and probably just long channels for things like root crops. If you rotate crops or succession plant, it might prove either impossible or at least not worth the effort. It would be something you'd have to redo at least once a year.

@@stonedapefarmer Very interesting that you say transplanting is a no-no in dry farming. I had heard the opposite--that starting transplants could be beneficial since it lets you pick out the best+healthiest plants, and when you transplant them they already have a root system developing to get more of their own water. I'd imagine you would have to harden them off and get them used to limited water for a few weeks before planting for that to work though... Has your experience of them been different? Thanks for your great vids and for sharing your knowledge!

​​@@stonedapefarmer interestingly on the Summer Squash front, I've read but yet to experiment {coming this season hopefully, I planted late this year} that summer squash flour behaves identically to Coconut Flour in the kitchen. That's a useful tool, since dehydrated like that it does have some measure of caloric value and it adds one more ingredient you can use to make different meals. Cornbread does get old eventually after all 😂

Between Portland/Salem and the coast.

@@stonedapefarmer Thanks. I've wondered about what can be done with clearcut timber land, so your project is very interesting.

@@gtromble Clearcuts have some interesting challenges, but also some unique advantages. Here's a write up I did of my experience thus far that I shared with someone else working with clearcut: permies.com/p/1234022 Maybe it'll give you some insights.

I don't purchase any food. I am gifted a meal about once a week on average. I have traded labor for a few 50 pound sacks of grains and legumes, but I should provide all of my own grain and legumes and starchy crops this year, based on present performance (pics on my community tab.) The important caveat being that this is the first year that things finally clicked and I haven't been on the verge of starving to death. I'm not shy about how close I came to dying out here. But I recognize that this is something we were almost universally capable of, at least within the context of communities, only a few generations ago. We just weren't taught how to really do this, 100%. Just bits and pieces. I'm just hoping I can help teach that necessary toolset and save other people some of the struggle. We'll see. 🤷‍♂️