Agricultural Scientists confirms Results of Three Sister Experiments

This is seriously important.  The three sister story is actually badly wrong.  Corn growing took place in the bottom lands where you had annual flooding and muck soils.  This crop produced two products.  Corn of course but also dried stover that is easily used to create biochar kilns as i posted ten years ago.  That bio char was then easily blended with the soil and carried in baskets to where growing need to be supported.

This made the artificial terraces easy to build up and work.  It also turns out that beans and vegetables grow best on those terraces.

All this supported the huge population with a completely sustainable food production technology.

AGRICULTURAL SCIENTIST CONFIRMS RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS ON BIOCHAR TERRACES

Posted by Richard Thornton | May 17, 2017 |

 https://peopleofonefire.com/agricultural-scientist-confirms-results-of-experiments-on-biochar-terraces.htmlCommunity

Why would our ancestors commit extensive labor to build terrace complexes on the mountainsides of the Southern Appalachians and the hillsides of the Piedmont . . . but then often nearby cultivate massive fields of corn in the river bottomlands? For example, the Track Rock Terrace Complex is in easy walking distance of several contemporary towns with mounds in the Nottely and Brasstown Creek flood plains.

Another question that I had was really a “fact check.” Virtually all American History and Anthropology books state that Native Americans “grew the three sister plants, corn, beans and squashes/pumpkins together,” because the plants were symbiotic. Is that really true, or is it the speculation of some professor, who everybody believed was infallible many decades ago?

Five years ago I started construction of a “mini-terrace complex” with the same orientation and soil types as Track Rock Gap. The only differences were is that the experimental location gets more rainfall and is a 2-5 degrees warmer in mid-summer than Track Rock Gap.

From the beginning I used biochar, Maya and Creek farming techniques . . . all of which focus on “growing the soil” year-round. I put all my bones and egg shells in the wood stove throughout the heating season and spread all of the ashes and charcoal on the garden. I compost all of the weeds and non-burnable organic kitchen waste then mix the compost into the soil during late winter and early spring. Periodically, during the peak growth periods, I irrigate with diluted human urine. I sprinkle fine wood ashes on predatory insects, which generally makes them shrivel and die.

Effect on plants

What I have found is that legumes (beans and peas) indigenous to the Americas grow like kudzu on my terraces. Seeds that the package says should grow vines 32 inches tall, produced vines six feet tall. Seeds that were supposed to grow vines to about six feet tall grew from 11 to 14 feet tall. The legumes seem to be the most affected by biochar soil techniques.

As all those who have seen the magic garden can confirm, the biochar terraces produce picture perfect collards, cabbages and broccoli with very little damage from insects. The broccoli and collards especially are “super-sized.” However, Native Americans did not grow members of the cabbage family until after Europeans began colonizing North America.

Both Yellow and Winter Squash planted near corn did very poorly with stunted fruits, while legumes planted near corn had spindly vines and few peas or beans. So the mixing of these three plants seems to be an “urban legend,” created by academicians, who never farmed in their lives.

I have found that corn, beans and members of the squash family prefer entirely different types of soil and sun exposure. Corn prefers sandy loam that is liberally treated with dolimitic lime, shells and animal bones. Beans do best on well-drained soils consisting of clay that has been converted into brown or black bio-char soil. Yellow (summer) squash prefers lots of space in soil, which contains a high percentage of decomposed wood or leave particles. Winter squash prefers rough, woodsy soil with lots of whole decomposing leaves and soil that has been recently burned by “slash and burn” techniques. I get monster butternut squashes when I plant the seeds directly in the areas where I burned brush and tree limbs the previous fall.

What the expert said

Dr. Ray Burden was kind enough to drive down from Tennessee to visit my hovel and magic biochar garden today. He served for many years as the Director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County, Tennessee Agricultural Extension Office then was on the staff of the University of Tennessee for several years. He has recently retired. Ray is of Creek and Uchee descent and a member of the Coweta Creek Confederacy.

Beans on a Guatemalan terrace farm

I asked Ray about the the contradiction between how my bio-char terrace garden behaved and what the history-anthropology text books say. The beans are amazingly productive on the terraces, but the corn is stunted unless build furrows out of sandy loam from bottom land.

One type of squash likes soil that is halfway between flood plain soils and mountainside soils, while the winter squash behave as if they would be happier growing on the edge of the woods and wrapping their vines around saplings. Tomato plants grow to seven feet tall in the exact same soil that the yellow squash likes. In contrast, pumpkins preferred the same soil that corn likes. They did not do well on the biochar terraces . . . even in the same locations that their cousins, winter squash liked.

I told Ray that I never saw corn growing on the terrace complexes in Chiapas State, Mexico and in southern Guatemala. I only saw beans, peppers and small sweet squashes growing on the terraces. All the corn was grown in bottom lands, while all the pumpkins and tobacco were grown at the bases of mountainsides in between the corn and the bean terraces. Were the Mesoamerican farmers doing things all wrong or was this actually very sophisticated farming techniques?

Ray responded, “We always told the farmers to grow the corn in the bottomlands and the beans on the uplands.”

So apparently, the “three sister crops growing together” thing is an urban legend (myth) created by someone, who never saw a Native American farmer and certainly never had a Native American in their home.