Three Sisters Thursday

april your garden looks sooo good!....its amazing how fast it has grown....i remember when you showed us your tiny babies and look at them now

quiltb....i hope you get to plant the three sisters next year...its been really fun for our family....we have learned so much

hugs

rose

our three sisters garden is thriving



we ate our first acorn squash tonight!



our momma pumpkin continues to grow and is now turning more orange every day...you can compare the size to those lemon cucumbers that are growing next to here



the scarlet runner beans have grown as tall as the corn



the corn is really filling out and we are getting nice fat ears...so yummy!



hugs

rose

Rose,

Your plants look great! Your racing beans look so pretty.

Margarita

thanks Margarita
yes....the racing beans are doing great ...no beans as of yet...but lots of pretty flowers....

hugs

rose

I have to live vicariously through you since my beans got fried in this heat. Maybe I'll try again this fall.

we continue to have really nice warm weather here in the PNW....im so happy to say our pumpkin is doing awesome!!....look how orange she is getting



here are some snake beans...i think they are so pretty



our scarlet *racer* beans have beans!



we still are eating corn last we counted i think we had 40 ears at one time....we shared the harvest with 13 family and friends last weekend...the corn was a big hit!....we had over a new family we just met....they have never picked corn before....and never had a garden ... they thought it was pretty neat to be growing them in our back yard (they are considering trying SFG)



hugs

rose

Rose,

Thanks for sharing those wonderful pics! Everything looks so beautiful! I can't wait to do a three sisters this spring/summer! What kind of corn is that? The husks have much more of a reddish/purple tint to them. So much color and happy, lush, green plants, such an inspiration! Congrats on such a successful garden!

I'm curious to know about the purple color too. I'm getting similar colors, on corn that I've grown before but that have never turned purple.

Is it the weird weather this year? The coolness early on that kept certain minerals from being absorbed by the plants?

the corn is called Kandy corn and it is suppose to have purple husks.... that is one reason we picked it to grow very good sweet flavor too!!....next year we are going to grow it again....this time i have heirloom seeds so that we can keeps seeds from it....our pumpkins are heirlooms very excited about that.....we are hoping to do an all heirloom three sisters garden next summer!

hugs

rose

I too was curious to what kind of corn that was...Thanx for letting us know--I believe I'll try that kind next year.

Cool! Thanks Rose, I think I'll have to use that next season too! They really are pretty.

April, Your three sisters is looking awesome as well!

You all keep the pics coming, this is one of my favorite threads.

Did anyone have issues with SVB's in their 3 sisters?

we are getting to the last of our corn....had these the other night for dinner



eating lots of squash.....had this one tonight for dinner!



pulled these guys out a few days ago...does anyone know what the middle one is? and do i cook it the same way as acorn squash....acorn is the only kind of squash i have ever cooked.....the one to the left is a butter cup squash and it said to cook it the same way as a acorn....havent tried it yet....cant wait to taste the new ones



my son thought the acorn on the right looks just like captian hooks....hook....



hugs

rose

Maybe some sort of delicata squash?

I'm sure it's delacata. You can use them in any recipe you'd use a butternut squash in. What I've done in the past with it, and it's pretty darned good, is to peel it, half it, remove the seeds and then cube it up. If you want to make it easier, you could nuke it first (after putting some holes in it to release the steam), allow to cool, then cut in half, remove seeds and cut out the meat of the squash or possibly peel and cube.

After the squash is prepared, fry some bacon, chop and cool. Either use the bacon fat or melt a tbs of butter and a tbs or two of evoo in a pan. Add 1/2 cup chopped onion, 1 chopped celery stalk and cook till tender. If the squash isn't already precooked, add it to the skillet first and then the onion and celery. When all the veggies are nice and soft, stir in the cooked, chopped bacon and salt and pepper to taste.

stripes that sounds yummy....im going to give that a try

well i know its not thrusday....but this week is going to be busy and im not sure if i will be able to take pics and post so i thought i would update now:D

we harvested and im cooking it right now as i type the last of our corn....we have really been blessed this year from this garden and we plan on doing it again next year and perhaps a bit bigger



the last of the corn...some beans and a couple of lemon cucumbers that are growing in the three sisters garden





here are our pumpkins....we have four of them growing not sure when to harvest them ??

this is the first one to grow and i call her momma



a smaller one hiding



there are two pumpkins here....one is between the two fences



lots of more acorns squash coming along



finding more butter cup squash growing up the fence



butter nut squash is just now making fruit hope the sun stays here long enough to be able to have them get ripe and eat.....never eatin one before



this the first time i have ever grown or eatin scarlet runner *racer* beans....is this the size you are to eat them at? or are they to big now and i should save them for seed next year?....do you eat it like a green bean or like a dry bean?



its a jungle that kept the coons out and has given us much joy and an awesome harvest of food!



hugs

rose

Rose, I've never even heard about the 3 sisters until I started to read about it here. Thank you so much for posting the pictures all summer. You've inspired me to do some boxes that way next year. I have read some of the thread and either skipped over or forgot, but how many boxes did you do as 3 sisters? Also, is your corn sweet corn?



Love your big momma. Isn't it funny how attached we get to our gardens? I'm afraid when we get our first hard freeze, I'm going to have a tear in my eye.

thank you stripesmom....you are so very kind (((hugs))) i have loved taking the pic's and im so glad you have enjoyed them....i know how much i love seeing other gardens.....they inspire me as well



our three sisters are not in our SFG *they* ....funny i call the garden *they* because of them being sisters... .....the three sisters are our second garden out back...(i have made mention in a earlier post )



its a *in ground* garden.....where we planted them.....in the area had been a large very old apple tree that we just couldnt get any good fruit from....it also had been a very wide spread compost area for over 15 years.....we cut the tree down a last year and this last spring we decided to take a look at the soil and see if we could do anything with it......it was and we are still fighting full of morning glory that wants to take over.....but....the soil is soil i have never seen before.....only heard about....deep-dark-rich and full of worms we had a lot to do to get it ready..it still had tons of sticks and such still breaking down....so we decided to plant in ground there....and well...the sisters loved it they have been eating from a 20+ years compost pile.....



the corn is sweet corn...its called Kandy corn.....very good!



rose....who yes has become very close to her gardens.....even naming plants now she only has to come to terms of harvesting big momma....

Rose, I love what you did with that ground. Once, I planted a tomato garden where we use to have a dog run for several years. It wasn't paved, just dirt and the dogs did their thing there. You would not believe the tomatoes and the plants that grew there were like some thing from a sci-fi movie.



I have fought morning glories in one rock garden for 15 years. They are really hard to get rid of. Thanks for letting me know what the corn is. It's so big and beautiful.

Nice picture of the runner "racer" beans. Just about the largest they should get. Any larger and then you have to strip the sides as as they can get tough. Don't let them fatten up unless you are saving them for seed.

Slice them and steam.

I've been following this thread all season and I just wanted to say:



WOW!!!! You ladies are awesome with the pics, advice, tips, etc. I'm trying to incorporate this in next season's plan.



Beans - those are some HUGE beans.

Squash/pumpkins - I'm so jealous, you got to grow your own Halloween pumkins. Your kids have got to be on cloud 9 about this.



Questions:

So you planted 4 beans per 1 corn?

The pumpkins/squash were planted around the perimeter of the garden?



thank you again for this thread.

wow stripes.....thats awesome....must of been some good fertilizer! whatcha been feeding those pups

thanks for the info on how big the beans should get and such kelejan....we are going to save some seeds...so i think i will let those really big ones go and save them


mad....we planted in mounds.....i believe a couple feet apart.....i would have to ask hubby...i *think* they are four or five feet from center to center of each mound....if you look back to the first page of this thread you can see my veggies when they were littel babies....you can see the mounds real well.....we have four corns per mound with about 6 inchs apart....with one bean per corn stock.....we have every other mound with corn/beans and then squash/pumpkins....as the pumpkins grew...we guided the runners up and down the path way between the mounds....the squash too if they had runners come out...the other squash just grew out bushy-er


im excited to clear the area out and see whats under there....i know we have a few squash in there.....im hoping for some extra surprises as well they say you can leave your squash out up until the first frost.....the pumpkins we are soooo excited about.....cant wait to make pumpkin pie!

hugs

rose

FamilyGardening wrote:wow

...
thanks for the info on how big the beans should get and such kelejan....we are going to save some seeds...so i think i will let those really big ones go and save them

imhugs

rose

Leave them on the vines if you can until they turn brown and dry. Then the beans will be nice and big and shiny.



hugs returned.

Well we harvested three of our pumpkins today these are our first ever pumpkins and the kids were so excited and thrilled!

this is my daughters *big momma*...she weighed in at 23.4 pounds!



my son's weighed in at 18.4!



here they are all together just waiting to become pies the little guy weighed in at 9 pounds!



we did some cleaning up today.....some of our corn stocks fell over from the wind....so we pulled them out and only left the ones that had beans on them still......look how big our scarlet *racer's* are getting





here are the acorn squash we harvested today



our butter nut squash still on the vine are getting bigger...fingers crossed they get ripe!

Wow!

What a wonderful success! Everything has really ripened so nicely! Thanks so much for sharing your 3 Sisters with us! I can't wait to try them out!

thanks capatl

we cut open the 18 pounder tonight and she is cooking in the oven as i type....the kids are so excited to be baking a pumpkin pie for the first time from a pumpkin they seeded and grew them selves the crust of the pie is a little harder though.....we just found out about a month ago that my son doesnt absorb fructose...even natrual froctose and he is now on a diet called the low fodmap diet....the diet doesnt allow him to have differnt fruits and veggies or wheat or brown rice....he also has to be careful with sugars....the sugar he needs to eat is dextose....we had to get that from a beer and wine making company :drunken: so we have been learning to cook and bake in a whole new way....im baking with flour now that i didnt even know was out there

we are going to save some of the seeds from these momma's....they are all heirlooms the rest we are going to roast them and use them in baking since one of the seeds my son is able to have is pumpkin seeds

i will update and post some pic's of the pie making later