The Three Sisters bed is coming along, despite the dry weather. After my previous post, when the maize was well started, I finished off the planting with bean seeds between the maize stems, and watermelon, rockmelon, and cucumber seedlings in the spaces between the maize blocks.
I have had to water a few times to keep things going (when the maize leaves curl up) but even so am surprised at how the plants have survived, especially the melons which came out of my shade house and had a pretty rough introduction to the great outdoors, with full sun, dry wind and hot weather.
The middle row of melons are mainly watermelon, and the right hand row mainly rockmelon. The cucumber seedlings I put in didn’t survive. For the beans I planted purple climbing beans in the left and right rows, most of which have sprouted and survived, but the green flat beans in the middle row didn’t sprout. Maybe they will come through with some rain, or otherwise I will re-sow for a later crop.
I haven’t had much pest problems with these, although I picked four caterpillars out of the maize hearts this morning (my mother hen surprised me by just pecking at them to show they were food, then letting the chicks eat them). It will be interesting to see how these turn out, especially when we get a break in the season. I can see now that the maize will stay well ahead of the climbing beans in the race for height.