The Last Of The Three Sisters To Be Brought In. Pumpkins/Squash.

The beans and the corn are finished and it is time to collect all the pumpkins as the first frosts have arrived. I collected two large wheel barrow loads, and now I have to preserve what I can. There will be a lot of pumpkin soup dinners coming up!

Gardens For Food.

One of the first things any new settler would have to do is put in a garden. There are wild edible plants in the woods, but they are far and few between. There is no point foraging for wild food plants if the energy you expend is more than the energy you can gain from the plants you find.
Our garden has to feed two of us, but we do have other family that we supply with food if we can. Recently I purchased some rye grass to sow in various areas, especially in Fox Valley and Butterfly Valley. This is to encourage more wildlife and game into the area.
We have had some recent good rains and our garden is doing well. The corn is up and flowering and there are two more corn areas planted. In with the corn we have planted beans as the Indians do, and we have also planted pumpkins. Corn, beans and pumpkins are the staple of the Indians which they call the three sisters. We also keep some chooks for eggs so we need to grow enough food to feed them as well as ourselves.
We have a patch of Jerusalem atichokes which have little taste but grow in plenty and are a crop we can rely on. The sunflowers are pleasant to look at and attract a native bee to our garden but they too are grown as food. Once collected and dried the sunflower seeds keep well.
Today I planted more corn and a marrow patch.

One of our patches of corn and some sunflowers.

Our pumpkin patch.

Runner beans.

Broad beans.

Jerusalem Artichokes.

18th Century Gardens in the New World.

One of our garden beds ready for planting. The rock is heavy so we left it in place.

Our Jerusalem Artichoke patch.

This garden on the left has an outside clay oven.

This shows the beans growing up the corn stems.

Here the beans grow up a tripod of sticks on a mound. The pumpkins planted around the mound.

In these images you can see that we have used logs to contain our gardens. This enables us to add soil and mulch without it spreading.

The woodland Indians grew the three sister together. First the corn was planted. When the corn was up and still young the beans would be planted next to the corn plants. This served two purposes, the beans would climb the corn plants as both grew, and the beans would add nitrogen to the soil for the corn to feed on. The pumpkins/squash would be planted around the outside of the corn patch.