Three Sisters

And when done well, they can be highly stable and frankly look way cooler than any other trellis.

Or, of course, there is corn, sunflowers, et cetera, that the beans can climb up, a la the Three Sisters slash Milpa-style gardening.

I will say about pole beans that, in general, they do often out-yield bush varieties and they have a longer harvest window, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how long.

You want to be harvesting beans and how much you want to fiddle with putting up a trellis and keeping the weeds down around it.

There is a story of the corn, in which the spirit of the corn is a maiden, not a handsome young chief, as one of the stories claims.

This corn maiden was one of three sisters, and was called Onata.

The three sister vegetables, the corn, the bean, and the squash, were called the Diahégon, which means those we live on, since they are the life-giving vegetables.

These sisters lived together on a hill and were very happy.

Other native nations, like the Haudenosaunee and Cherokee, depended on corn, grown either on its own or closely planted with beans and squash.

They knew these crops as the Three Sisters, because like family, they protected each other and grew better together.

Unlike the two brothers, Orange Juice and Toothpaste, which are sworn enemies.

But all that changed when Europeans began colonizing the land we now call the United States.

The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project, for example, hosts harvest festivals, maintains a community garden, and teaches tribal members how to prepare salmon and elk.

The Cherokee Nation shares free heirloom seed packets with their members, encouraging them to grow and eat the same crops as their ancestors.

And the Three Sisters Project at Iowa State University partners with native gardeners to study how growing corn, beans, and squash together nourishes people, plants, and the soil.

Plus, native chefs have been making their mark in the culinary world, opening restaurants, publishing cookbooks, and working to bring traditional foods into the limelight.

So there are some farmers doing agroecology, which is, I mean, to be honest, the best example is actually Native Americans.

Have you ever heard of the Three Sisters? So the Three Sisters is growing corn.

and having beans grow with the corn and use the corn stalk as a thing to grow up and then have squash at the bottom pushing out all the weeds that would have come in otherwise.

It's this famous thing of corn, beans, and squash that's Native American.

Today on 4Q, we're going to talk about foods that built civilizations, but we're turning our attention to the Americas and the three sisters, corn, bean, and squash.

If you've ever been to the Cave Creek Museum just north of Phoenix, it's worth going.

I lived in Phoenix for 28 years, and one of the things I always loved about the Valley of the Sun was that almost anywhere somebody digs deep enough, somebody who came before us shows up.

one of my favorite places to visit was montezuma's castle north of phoenix which has one minor problem as far as historical names go montezuma had nothing whatsoever to do with it he didn't build it he didn't live there and almost certainly never knew it existed farther south around sedona through the verde valley are other ruins farming sizes pottery shards evidence of communities that lived there for centuries and there is one simple reason why These people had developed a system of agriculture that allowed them to develop cities, trade routes, governments.

All of those things happened, and then they disappeared 100 years before the first Europeans set foot in that area.

Today, on 4Q, we're going to make sense of the madness of corn, beans, and squash, the three sisters.

4Q

I'm Dr. Terry Simpson, your Chief Medical Explanationist, and this is Fork U.

For instance, you can grow crops like maybe corn and maybe legumes or squash and other things together.

just like I think here in Canada they do with the three sisters farming practice where one crop serve as a pest control for the other and other I think the beans serves as the nitrogen for the soil for the corn to grow and also provide support for the beans and all that so at the end of the day you realize The mixed farming method improves the yield or the results at the end of the farming period.

So extension officers have been able to advance knowledge in this area for the people to now understand that it is not a taboo or it's not...

But to grow these kind of crops together and now they are engaging in mixed farming and that has also contributed in dealing with all these issues with low yield and seasonal productivity of farming.

It

was their three sisters planting.

They planted corn.

They planted pole beans, which vined up the corn.

Have you ever done that?

I have not done that.

I've seen it at the botanical garden, Three Sisters Garden.

It just makes sense.

And squash is planted in there to keep cover crops.

See, the three sisters.

Indians knew that a thousand years ago.

But beans...