I want to use square-foot gardening with a 3-sisters garden

Sherri
by Sherri
I'm using the square-foot gardening tool with Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner to plan my veggie garden. I'd like to try a 3-sister garden this year for part of my growing space. Can someone tell me if they think the plan below would work? The total space depicted in this picture is 11-feet x 5-feet.
  6 answers
    • Sherri Sherri on Feb 27, 2018

      Thanks Suzette. My concern is that my available space to try this is only 11' x 5'. The plans I've seen are for 10' x 10' or bigger. I'm not sure I'm allotting enough space for this to succeed.

  • Suzzann Suzzann on Feb 27, 2018

    What is a 3-sister garden?

  • Sherri Sherri on Feb 27, 2018

    Native Americans planted using a technique they called three-sisters. The sister plants are corn, climbing beans, and squash. These plants benefit each other in a couple of ways. One of the plants attracts bugs that commonly are a problem on another. The beans climb the corn and also supply needed nitrogen to both corn and squash which are heavy feeders. The squash grows on the ground while the other plants reach high.

  • Nancy Turner Nancy Turner on Feb 27, 2018

    That's an awful lot of green beans! What happened to some tomato plants, cucumbers, carrots and peppers? Cucumbers could climb your corn or even at the edge of the garden on the fence like I do.

    • See 1 previous
    • Nancy Turner Nancy Turner on Mar 01, 2018

      That sounds better. I know the crops I get in my garden using the north side of the garden fence for pole beans and a plot for bush beans, the amount the chart showed was kind of scary unless you planted and canned a lot for you and everyone else you know. I wish I had a garden as large as you have. I don't have that much sunny area to put vegetables on.

  • Ouina Ouina on Mar 01, 2018

    I think you have it planned out just fine. Do you have at least 8+ hours of direct sunlight?


    I would also use 1/2 soil and 1/2 compost mix in your raised beds in order to give the plants plenty of slow-release nutrients that come from the compost. Be sure to add a couple of inches of compost and work into the planting bed before the start of a new planting season.


    I have done this in my raised gardening beds for the last 25 years to grow organically and have had great success in square foot vegetable gardening. I also have a BS/MS in horticulture so that helps :-).

  • Sherri Sherri on Mar 01, 2018

    And yes, this is the sunniest part of my yard and it does get 8+ hours of sun during the summer months.