The Garden 2013

So it started out as a project for my daughters, who are four. They wanted a garden. We rent the home we live in so tilling up part of the yard wasn’t necessarily an option. While driving around town and looking at Facebook and Pinterest (yeah, I know, I’m a guy who uses Pinterest) I was noticing a number of yard planters being posted. Being a farm kid, I ignored all the complicated directions posted online and bought a sheet of ¾” plywood. I had some leftover 4x4 chunks from a previous project. Measuring 8” I made a series of cuts the short way on the plywood and cut four 8” pieces for the corners of each planter. Using wood glue and screws I put everything together and made two 4’x4’x8” planters for the girls garden.

After doing some searching on the Frontier Folk Forum it was decided to do a 3-sisters type of garden. The varieties used would be Mandan Sweet Corn, Mandan Summer Squash and Hidatsa Red Beans. These were all purchased from Museum of the Fur Trade. Now, admittedly, this wasn’t necessarily the agricultural method used by the plains Indians in my neck of the woods.  In grade school it seems that anytime 3-sisters is talked about it’s going hand in hand with the Iroquois. That being said, with the space I had available, and it being a historic method, this was the route that was chosen.

The way this works is that mounds are made that the seeds are planted in. Usually at the bottom of the mound was parts of a dead fish or other animal matter to provide nutrients for the plants. Corn or maize was planted first and once it got so tall beans were planted in the same mound, which would crawl up the corn. In the middle of these mounds would then be planted some sort of squash. After the plants got established the squash would provide groundcover, helping to keep moisture in the ground, and would keep the weeds from growing.

Corn was planted first in germination pods in a plastic greenhouse box, which was then followed by the beans and squash.  They were then all planted in mounds as described above. The woman of the lodge (my wife) made it clear that no “dead fish or other animal or its parts” were to be used in this process as they would attract the neighbors cats. I told her that I had some nice 110 conibear traps that would take care of that problem nicely. Her response was “You are not allowed to trap the neighbors cats.”

Things grew pretty well, and then the hail came, twice. Despite that, the squash kept growing like gangbusters. In retrospect I’m thinking that I should have done some pruning to the squash a bit. I also think that if the planters had been in the center of the yard where they would have gotten more sun would have made a difference. 

For the first time doing this, we were fairly happy with the results. We planted 3 corn plants, 3 squash plants and 6 bean plants. The picture shows most of the harvest. For next year I hope to build a couple more planters and hope to learn more about the agricultural practices of tribes like the Mandan, Hidatsa and Assiniboine, three tribes from our area, and attempt to grow the garden more in accordance to their style of practice.