We’ve got a garden in (because oh boy, do we have plenty of dirt with the construction going on!), and we’ve been steadily working on it over the past couple of weeks. Instead of deluding ourselves into believing that that this was the year that we were going to get a giant garden in that would cover a large portion of our produce bill, we decided to keep it simple. We also decided to make it a homeschooling lesson for the boys – we’re planting the Three Sisters.

The Three Sisters are the three vegetables that the Iroquois (the Native American Confederation that lived around us) planted together – corn, beans and squash. These plants work in unison to help one another out: the corn is a trellis for the vining beans to climb, the beans put nitrogen from the air into the soil to benefit the corn and squash, and the giant leaves of the squash plant shades out the lower part of the garden to act as weed control. Plus, these three vegetables have a relatively high caloric count compared to most other things you might grow in a garden, so you don’t need to grow as much of it to make up the fruit and veggie portion of your diet. We like things like broccoli, zucchini, and spinach, but the fact of the matter is growing such things will never put as big a dent in what we buy at the grocery store as the Three Sisters will.

We’ve had good luck growing squash in the past, although this is our first year growing corn and vining beans. I remember doing bush beans as a teenager at a garden at my parents’ house, and those were always a huge success. Hopefully these beans will also prove to be as such.

Also – look at these peaches!!

Okay, okay, they might not look any different than the last time I posted about them. But they ARE bigger, and there’s a ton of them on our trees. I’m really hopeful that we get a good peach harvest this year!