3 sisters day
 

No.....not that.....git your mind out of the gutter.....ahahahaaaa...

Planted today what the native americans called "the 3 sisters"......corn, beans, squash.

Back was killing me, but it was good to work it out in the garden.

Hope we get that rain they are calling for Wednesday.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Awesome!

I'm waiting for the drought to break to get my 3 sisters planting done but I've got some corn and squash in the ground right now. I've actually got a few ears of corn forming on my stunted experimental crop, the only thing keeping it from going to the compost pile right now.

What varieties of corn, beans and squash are you growing? I've got hickory king corn, rattlesnake beans and Seminole pumpkin squash.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

That sounds great! I just had some more of our early peaches. So delicious! I'm not growing vegetables this year, but they sure sound good. Maybe just a few squash plants. We both love yellow squash fresh picked. And 2 plants let us eat them very small and tender every night if we like. We generally do like. From the store we find them bitter and unappetising.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Same corn Rev......wanted to try some Reids Dent this year, but I was afraid they were too close and would cross. My beans are just Blue Lakes.....we like them, and yellow crookneck squash....again, something we like. Set a BUNCH of squash....gonna try drying some this year and see how it does.


You growing the corn for you or chickens ? I'm gonna make meal out of some, and feed out of the rest.


"From the store we find them bitter and unappetising." Yeah, AM.....us too.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

The corn was originally going to be mostly for the birds but my success with sunflower has been such that I'm considering cutting back drastically on the ammount of corn I'll grow.

I planted the corn and the sunflowers at about the same time, the sunflowers grew to full height and I'm already taking in seed from them. The corn was dwarfed by the cold weather and the ears are only just beginning to form. The sunflowers also yield much more oil and are still tall enough to act as bean poles. I'll still give the corn a chance at growing during its normal season but I don't think I'll have to rely on it for feed so heavily. I still want some for roasting, corn nuts, grits, maybe try popping it and one other application that was quite popular back in the swamps I came from... muahahaha! :D

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Gotta admit , that thought was the only reason I clicked on this thread:bear_whistle: .
I've tried corn. 3 times now. I can't get it right .Here in NE , Jersey is famous for thier corn, but maybe I'm just close to the wrong part of jersey? . I got plants to 3 feet , never an ear. Deaf plants maybe?:rofl:
Anyway. I have found Yellow and green squash to not only border on the idiot proof, but to be so easy to stagger.
I plant pole beans, and squash, By simply planting the sqash two weeks apart here , I can get harvest .. you guessed it , two weeks apart. 3, 4 times.That doesn't seem to work with many other veggie crops for us , we get stunts , preemies and rot when I try it with the pole beans.
My blueberries absolutely thriving now. The two BluJay vars are damn near chest high.I just hope the pretty white flowers all translate into berries. My neighboor has warned me that watering too much during set will result in larger , but less tasty berries , so I'm trying to play it cool, but the urge to water is strong!
Raspberry ( Boyne) are doing well too, though they're younger and I don't expect much fruit this year. BTW, these need be isolated or rasied , especially if you've opposed to spread, as these will sucker out hard - really they will attempt to take your whole property. Now that sounds fine ,but the truth is they are invasive, and will sucker as opposed to, iow , in lieu of , fruiting. Keep that in mind. This is true of most brambles.
I'm NY , is it too late to lay some strawberries, -- anyone? I could lay them this week. But I only want to if I'll fruit in July. Zone 6.
Clearing land , small , for fall fruit tree planting this fall.
PS- anyone have NY grape experience-outside LI , I don't know of much, but my local nursery sells three or four varities , how hard are they? Worth the effort?
Thanks.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Rev, for your hens you might try some millet too. We also like it ourselves, but hens love it. In scratch and birdseed it is the small round light yellow seed. I have seen hens eat those first.

It tastes a bit like grits cooked up for humans, but is one of the few grains that is alkaline in the body which we consider a plus. It has a short growing season, like it makes a crop in 60 some days, and does not need as much nitrogen or rain at the right time as corn.

It might be too wet for it there. You might have to see what the local Ag agent and Ag colleges have to say.

For our little flock of 25 I calculated that I could feed them with 40 x 80 feet of millet, which I have available in one side yard. For me the fact that almost no passers by would recognize it as food was a plus.

Sunflowers are great too, though. Both for the hens and you.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

around the German Scandanavian parts of Wisconsin, like Racine, "Three Sisters" is a pastry with a nice custard filling. Places they sell "kringle" usually sell it.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Strawberries are tolerant, but they won't set fruit the first year, ever. Actually, they will set a few, but to improve the root, you're advised to pinch them off. That's the thing about farming--have to think ahead.

I'm guessing you're in the sand part of Jersey. Corn is a heavy feeder, strong on nitrogen. Get the soil right and it'll grow. Too much, like pure manure, etc, it'll keel over though, as it's a tall plant that won't put sufficient root. Happens in wet years too. Silver queen is an advised variety (hybrid) in the middle parts. Very late variety, but good for freezing.

TS

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Thanks TS. Yes actually my home is on part of what was once a commercial sand pit. I'll look more into amending this coming fall and try again next year maybe.
I'll hold off on the strawberries then , since I'm planning to do a lot this fall in terms of planning and planting and will wait to see what i decide to move where etc.
Thanks again.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

I am going to try the 3 sisters this year. Any tips on spacing in between the seeds? I planted just corn last year and was disappointed, but at least I got some ears. They were very small, about 4 inches. Then before I could harvest them, something busted the stalks and ran off with most of the ears one night. Probably racoons.

Last year we had about 30 tomato plants and they all produced at the same time. Nice big tomatoes, but way too many at one time. Will have to figure out how to can those suckers or freeze them or something.

We aren't supposed to plant until after Memorial day here because the mornings can still be frosty. Got down to 36 degrees two nights ago. So I went out to clear some trees and accidently tapped my knee with the chainsaw today. Opened a gash about two inches across my kneecap. I've had worse. Just put some neosporin on it and a bandage and took the rest of the day off. Can't bend my knee though.

I have a small orchard of apple trees. About 6 trees and a couple of pear trees. They didn't product much last year and I figured out they have powdery mildew. So I sprayed one of the trees with some fungicide a couple weeks ago and now it is in full bloom. Nice. Didn't have enough fungicide for the others and they aren't doing anything. Need to get some more of that stuff quick.

The chickens are coming next week and I will have to figure out how to keep them out of the garden. I would prefer to let them run loose behind the house, but not if they are going to be rooting in the gardens.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Ouch! :censored: Get well soon... glad it's just skin deep. I don't imagine sawing the knee cap in half would be very pleasant. :wazzup_sg

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Whoa, Dave.....chainsaws can hurt ! Better get you a pair of those Kelvar chaps. I have a set I never use...wanna buy them ? :D

They really work, seriously. I was working for the US Forest Service back in high school one summer, and they made us wear them....caught my leg with a saw one saw while it was running wide open, went thru the chap right up to my jeans, but stopped before it got skin.


On tomatoes, I actually like mine to come in together so we have enough to make some runs of canning. We can crushed and cook some down into a spagetti sauce. We like Roma for canning/sauce.

On seed spacing, what I do is plant plenty, then go back and thin 30-50% later with a hoe after they get up a few inches.....otherwise, I find I end up with gaps of a foot or so where I'm wasting space because some seed didn't germinate. I open a row in fresh tilled dirt, then just walk along and drop plenty of seed, then walk back straddling the row kicking dirt back over the seed. I use a hoe to open the rows, but this year I've decided I gonna fab up a "row opener" to go on my tiller.....just a set of small plow points welded on a horizontal bar that will pull open a row right behind the tiller to save the time going back with the hoe. I'm off to the Tractor Supply this morning to see what kind of points I can find while I've got it on my mind.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

It's great for chickens to scrounge around in your garden, depending on how many chickens you have and how large your garden is. I encourage mine to do it as they help fight weeds and bugs while simultaneously fertilizing the ground. The trick of it is to not introduce the birds till the plants are too large to be trampled and don't put a large number of birds in a place that has only a few plants, obviously.

If you leave them out loose overnight expect ever mounting predator losses. I've been playing around with the chicken tractor idea and have learned a few things. First, I like the idea of letting my birds have access to the ground for bugs and grass but I don't really tractor with it. A larger eclosure with more than 5 square feet per bird needs to be moved less often. I visited a pioneer museum a while ago and it ends up that somebody else had the idea 100 years ago. Next thing, chicken wire/poultry netting has too large of a mesh, coons can reach through. Use 1/2" hardware cloth instead. Finally I've decided to enclose the bottom with large mesh welded wire or hog wire. It's open enough to allow the chickens access to the ground but nothing the size of a coon or similar will be able to come up through the bottom.

I've abandoned the chicken tractor idea though. What I'm transitioning to is more like what I saw at the museum. It'll be an A-frame 6 feet tall at the peak and 10'x10' on the ground. The first half from the peak down will be solid roof. The rest will be be hinged like a shutter so it can be opened in the day and closed at night. Mesh will keep the birds in and hawks out during the day. It will have an open bottom either covered with hogwire or I'll take some angle iron and cut large saw teeth into it and affix that to the bottom in such a away that any critter trying to dig under the edge will tear himself up on the teeth. It will still be moveable so I won't have to clean a nasty coop and the birds can get fresh pasture.

The birds don't stay inside any enclosure full time, I let mine out to forage when I'm there to watch. A word of advice too, your birds will be easier to handle if you let them get to know you at a young age and don't handle them roughly by grabbing them by the neck and tail. I recently got a rooster that had been raised without human interaction of any kind and was always roughly handled. The former owner complained about how viscious he was. After two days of working with him I can pick him up and put him on my lap and he won't even try to peck me. He's still flightly though. You don't have to tenderly love carress every bird you're going put on your dinner table, but spend ten or twenty minutes by the birds every day so they know who you are. It'll make your life a lot easier.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Thanks Andy. I got too sloppy with the saw. Won't do that again. We will prolly go the canning route this year with the tomatoes. Once we figure out how. Nice idea about the plow points behind the tiller. Last year after tilling, I just poked a broom handle in the soil, dropped a corn kernal in, and kicked some dirt over it. Did that a couple hundred times. They almost all sprouted. But was time and labor intensive. I like your idea better.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

That A-frame thing sounds cool. We had chickens in Florida and we trained them to live in a tree. Every evening at dusk, they all got in the tree by themselves. But up here, I will need to keep them covered in the winter, so I have to build a coop. We are starting with day old chicks, so they will know us really well and they won't do much harm to the garden. Next year will be more of a challenge. I might have to keep them in a tractor for a while. I could see where getting them from the tractor to the coop each night might be a problem. Ah, I'll figure it out somehow.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

My birds know the drill pretty well. Once I start herding them towards their tractor they realize its time to go inside. Chickens are very trainable, it suprised me.

Re: 3 sisters day
 

Hey Andy, there was one thing I forgot to mention re: back pain. I do a lot of manual labor around my place as I'm sure you do around yours so it isn't all that uncommon that I'll end up pulling some muscles and whatnot. My wife heard that applying cayenne extract can help, I tried it and it works good. I don't know what kind of trouble your back is giving you but I know if I have to stoop or bend for an extended period mine can get pretty tensed up and this stuff does the trick. If it's a disk or bone sort of issue I don't know if it'll work as well.