Planting a 3 sister garden for the first time

This spring we unexpectedly where gifted a handful of pumpkinseed. I always have the Hokkaido pumpkin Solor and save seed from them as well. In order for the seeds to come true, there can not be any other pumpkin varieties growing to close to them. Very curious as too what kind of pumpkinseed we where gifted I was glad we still had the smaller garden bed, of our new created garden 1, free. Our new created garden 1 is on the north side of our property near our pond and where I planned the pumpkins I normally grow, is at the complete opposite side of our property at the south side. There also are several groups of trees in between. As I understand from different sources the pollinators do not fly such great distances especially with so much to feed upon along the way and so many obstacles.

I have been wanting to try the 3 sister garden for a while now and actually had planned it at the south side of our property, but the farmer planted corn on the field south to our property and that will not be sweet corn. I have had this in the past and the corn cross pollinated and the corn we became was not that tasty and the seed obviously did not give tasteful new corn. We used this as feed for chickens.

This let me to rethink my garden plan and give up on growing corn this year, but after having a garden bed left in the new garden 1 and being gifted pumpkinseed I decided to create the 3 sister garden there.

So first things first. A 3 sister garden needs a nutrient rich garden bed and luckily we still had a good amount of ready compost which my husband brought to the garden bed with the tractor.

We spread out a layer of about 8 cm of compost and planted the sweet corn seedlings. Since the compost tents to dry out a bit, I made a hole in the compost and planted the corn in the soil below. This way the corn also has some protection against the harsh wind that blows here a lot.

I planted 2 rows and a short 3th row of sweet corn about 50 cm apart and about 30 cm in between the plants in the row.

I had only 5 pumpkins that sprouted and filled the 3th row with them, a few days after I planted the sweet corn. I did sow the remaining pumpkinseeds we where gifted in some containers and will plant them, if any sprout, in between the corn later.

I watered the corn seedlings after planting and I luckily remembered in time to water in the planting holes before planting the pumpkin seedlings. This is the better way around, because the roots are more likely to grow down with the moisture.

After that I direct sowed 3 varieties of runner beans to complete the 3 sister garden. I sowed Feuerbohnen, a group with self saved seed and one with store bought seed, Neckarkönigin, only self saved seed, and Brunhilde, only store bought seed.

We did this in the first half of June and I have noticed some mole activity which had covered some corn seedlings I uncovered again, but other then that all is looking good.