Three Sisters (agriculture)

The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Indigenous peoples of North America: squash, maize ("corn"), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans).
In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.

Indigenous peoples throughout North America cultivated different varieties of the Three Sisters, adapted to varying local environments.
The individual crops originated in Mesoamerica; squash was domesticated first, followed by maize and then beans, over a period of 5,000–6,500 years.
European records from the sixteenth century describe highly productive Indigenous agriculture based on cultivation of the Three Sisters throughout what are now the Eastern United States and Canada, where the crops were used for both food and trade.
Geographer Carl O. Sauer described the Three Sisters as "a symbiotic plant complex of North and Central America without an equal elsewhere".

Cultivation methods

In indigenous American companion planting, maize ('' Zea mays''), beans ('' Phaseolus'' and ''Vicia'' spp.), and squash (''Cucurbita pepo'') are planted close together. The maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds.
In the northeastern U.S., this practice increases soil temperature in the mound and improves drainage, both of which benefit maize planted in spring.
Each mound is about high and wide, and several maize seeds are planted close together in the center of each mound; in parts of the Atlantic Northeast, rotten fish or eels are buried in the mound with the maize seeds, to act as additional fertilizer where the soil is poor.
In Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) farming, the fields were not tilled, enhancing soil fertility and the sustainability of the cropping system by limiting soil erosion and oxidation of soil organic matter.

The three crops benefit by being grown together.
The cornstalk serves as a trellis for the beans to climb, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil, and their twining vines stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.
The prickly hairs of some squash varieties also deter pests, such as deer and raccoons.

Although this synergy had been traditionally reputed among American cultures, scientific confirmation has arrived only much more recently.
Much of this research was performed in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s and published in several volumes of ''Biochemical and Physiological Bases for Plant Interactions in Phytocenosis'' edited by . Dzubenko & Petrenko 1971, Lykhvar & Nazarova 1970 and Pronin ''et al.'' 1970 find a wide number of leguminous crops increase the growth and yield of maize, while Gulyaev ''et al.'' 1970 select later maturing lines of beans to produce the converse effect, increasing even further the yield gain of beans when planted with maize.
Pronin ''et al.'' 1972 find increased productivity and root exudate in both crops when combining ''Vicia faba'' with maize, and even more so in soils with preexisting high nitrogen fixing microorganism activity.

Indigenous peoples throughout North America cultivated different varieties of the Three Sisters, adapted to varying local environments.
The '' milpas'' of Mesoamerica are farms or gardens that employ companion planting on a larger scale.
The Ancestral Puebloans adopted this garden design in the drier deserts and xeric shrublands environment. The Tewa and other peoples of the North American Southwest often included a "fourth Sister", Rocky Mountain bee plant ('' Cleome serrulata''), which attracts bees to help pollinate the beans and squash.
The Three Sisters crop model was widely used by a number of First Nations in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands region.

Productivity

European records from the sixteenth century describe highly productive Indigenous agriculture based on cultivation of the Three Sisters throughout what are now the Eastern United States and Canada, from Florida to Ontario.
Geographer Carl O. Sauer described the Three Sisters as "a symbiotic plant complex of North and Central America without an equal elsewhere".
Agronomist Jane Mt. Pleasant writes that the Three Sisters mound system "enhances the soil physical and biochemical environment, minimizes soil erosion, improves soil tilth, manages plant population and spacing, provides for plant nutrients in appropriate quantities, and at the time needed, and controls weeds".

Nutritionally, maize, beans, and squash contain all nine essential amino acids, as well as complex carbohydrates and essential fatty acids.
The protein from maize is further enhanced by protein contributions from beans and pumpkin seeds, while pumpkin flesh provides large amounts of vitamin A; with the Three Sisters, farmers harvest about the same amount of energy as from maize monoculture, but get more protein yield from the inter-planted bean and pumpkin.
Mt. Pleasant writes that this largely explains the value of the Three Sisters over monoculture cropping, as the system yields large amounts of energy, and at the same time increases protein yields; this polyculture cropping system yielded more food and supported more people per hectare compared to monocultures of the individual crops or mixtures of monocultures.

Society and culture

Maize, beans, and squash, whether grown individually or together, have a very long history in the Americas.
The process to develop this agricultural knowledge took place over 5,000–6,500 years. Squash was domesticated first, with maize second and beans third.
Squash was first domesticated 8,000–10,000 years ago.

Cahokian, Mississippian and Muscogee culture

Corn, squash and beans were planted ca. 800 AD in the largest Native American city north of the Rio Grande known as Cahokia, in the present US state of Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri.
The Three Sisters crops were responsible for the surplus food that created an expanded population throughout the extended Mississippi River System, creating the Mississippian and Muscogee

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