Three Sisters Method of Planting

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As many of you readers know, we don't do anything by conventional means on this Cockeyed Homestead. Last Sunday. I touched on the way I plant our garden. I do what works for me. I grow an adaptive garden which makes it easier for me to care and harvest my produce. I use the square foot gardening method to plant my garden in zone, but I'll also interplant these zones with multiple crops of vegetables and herbs.

Now I not only do square foot gardening and companion plant, but I throw succession planting also. With a small amount of growing space (less than 1/8 an acre), I can harvest what we need for a year. I get triple duty and harvest from the same square foot of space I have to garden in for optimum results. I don't make raised beds anymore but use the whole garden set up in "rooms" or different sections. The whole garden has had years of ground up tree stuff, hay, straw, cardboard placed on it for years to build and condition the hard packed clay soil into a nutrient dense growing medium. Why would I plant in single rows with plants two foot apart. To me, it's a waste of space.

Hey, what can I say. I'm the eclectic minded in all things. There are many ways to build a gardening and gardening. I do a little bit of most of them in my organic garden.

This leads me to today's topic, the three sisters method of planting. Now if you follow the square foot gardening method, you can plant four corn seeds in a square foot section, or nine climbing beans/peas, or one squash/pumpkin/gourd/sweet potato per square.

I don't do that. I expand my square to two feet. I'll plant three corn seeds 6" apart, seven bean/peas around it three weeks later, I'll plant more for a bumper crop harvest of dried legumes. I'll plant squash/pumpkin/gourd plants in each corner. In the spaces between the squashes/et al, I'll plant nasturtiums and marigold flowers to deter nasty insects and diseases. I'll skip the next square foot and do it again on down the row or section. I do leave myself 3' around each mound to maneuver.

This year around my 46 bi-colored corn, I'm planting black eyed peas, kidney beans, and baby lima beans to dry next week. Two weeks after they begin to sprout I'll go in and plant more bean/pea seeds. Since the peas and beans will be drying on the vines, I want to have plenty to harvest. I planted my corn transplants in my garden last week so next week I'll plant seeds and transplants of vegetables and flowers around the corn.

I honestly love this method of planting. It's a no brainer for weed and pest control. Yes, it takes up space in my little garden, but oh, the havest! In case you are wondering, I do not like pole or runner beans. No fencing required. The stalks will remain in place until the last of the beans.peas are harvested. 

Down in the orchard, I'll be planting my dent corn later in the summer. The ears will dry on the stalks and harvested before the first frost. This is my winter chicken feed and my grits/corn meal/ corn flour. We won't be 100% self sufficient in this, but close to 75% but that's better than having to purchase it all. Oh, Before I forget the mention it. I'll grow three black oil sunflower seed in the 6" center space in the corn. So I guess my cockeyed garden is FOUR SISTERS. 😄 I'll also be planting them in and around my dent corn too. My bunnies and chickens LOVE their snacks. 

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Cockeyed Homestead's Adaptive Gardening Style

Adaptive gardening can only take you so far. If you are like us, we depend on the production of our garden to supply us for the whole year. We use a variety of planting methods. Some are adaptive and some are not.

This year we are focusing on building up new sections of the garden area. We laid wood chips in a thick layer. Then, we laid down cardboard. On top of it all, we placed straw bales. Hopefully in a season or two, we'll have a foot or more new, rich, composted soil over the hard, compacted red clay and granite rocks in which to grow vegetables in.

Straw bale gardening is another adaptive gardening technique. But for us, I'm not talking a dozen straw bales. I got fifty of them. As I said, our garden needs to provide a year's worth of vegetables for us. Each row around the perimeter of the garden took 10 bales a side in a trapezoid shape. This is all new ground for the garden. It was previously a rough driveway of sorts so the clay is really compressed. Now, with the new driving areas graveled in, we've got a definite borders to the garden besides just a fence.

While planting or transplanting these bales, would be a classic adaptive or handicapable garden, the interior of the garden is the standard row planting. Unlike the previous year where I misplanted some crops in low raised beds that should have been elevated and vice versa, this year I'm actually mapping it out before I plant. I know what I need to plant where.

I'm also not listening to Mel this year. Her idea of walkways between rows and mine are feet apart . Her ideal walkway between tomato plants is 2' when actually with the sprawling growth, tomatoes really need 4' between rows. I just really have difficulty managing to weed and harvest in that narrow of a row spacing. My toy box garden cart or a garden cart won't fit between the rows once the plants reach full maturity.

We are still growing potatoes in tires. Old tires are easy to manage. It's upcycling although there is some concern about toxicity of old tires. We roughly get 50 lbs of potatoes a year and that is just about right for the two of us to consume. I just throw another tire on the stack and compost as it grows. I usually stop mounding tires and compost when I get five tires stacked. That's roughly 5lbs of potatoes for each tire. We usually do two tire towers for 50 lbs or there abouts. To harvest, it's simply removing the tires one by one and pulling the potatoes out. The soil can be mixed with new compost and it's recharged for the next plants. The straw we put in the noncentral parts of the tire also decompose over the growing season. The reason we do this is water tends to pool inside of this part. It serves to provide a moist not soggy growing area.

After the initial potato harvest, I'll stack and fill the tires two high for sweet potatoes or onions. Some of the tires I'll leave as singles and plant spinach or other greens in them. I do like my gutter planters (another adaptive gardening technique) for lettuces though. I can pick micro greens to my heart's content without stooping. Gutter planting works best on quick harvesting like salad greens. They aren't deep enough for standard crops. They also tend to dry out quickly so close and careful monitoring is essential. I've watched videos on using this technique for strawberries, but when I attempted it I found the soil depth too shallow for an abundant harvest.

If you are only raising two or three tomato plants a raised bed is fine, but this year we'll be plant a minimum of 25 plants between Roma paste tomatoes and Cherokee blacks. The same goes for other vegetables too.  For seedling or seeds planting, I carry two sticks. One is 6" long and one is 3' long. Can you guess why? The 6" stick is for elevated raised bed planting. Our beds are only 3 1/2' wide. It's an easy reach to the center of the beds. The 3' stick is for ground level planting. It's also a substitute cane if I need it. I use a lot of different things in the garden that can substitute for my cane; a rake or hoe works wonderfully. I can get pretty creative when it comes to my mobility issues and doing what I want/need to do.

I say that living post stroke has been an adventure. In a way it has been a great blessing. A blessing?! I hear y'all now wondering how anyone would consider surviving a stroke is a blessing. "Jo, you've stepped off the ledge and are free falling into the crazy zone!" My response is still, it's a blessing. Hear me out. I jokingly say that God permitted my strokes to happen to me to teach me patience and it's working.

• I have met many wonderful and supportive people since my stroke. Ones I may not have met otherwise. I inspire regular folks to break free of their comfort zones and try something new.
• In spite of all I lost in abilities, I've found new and creative avenues to enjoy that I may not have tried if it weren't for my strokes.
• I'm thinking more outside the box to achieve what I want out of life. Admittedly, I've always thought outside the box, but now it's extreme and I love it.
• Through the frustrations in attempting to live my life post stroke, I've developed a more patient attitude. See, God, it's working.
• Through my pain, I have a deeper compassion and empathy for others than I had before. I can relate more on a one by one basis.
• Through my limited ability, doors or windows open that were closed shut before.

Every experience is an opportunity for learning. You can either embrace it and get on with your life, or stew in despair. I never would have thought that adaptive gardening as a way to be self sufficient before my strokes. My strokes opened my eyes to a new way of being self sufficient and productive that I wouldn't have thought of before.

Sure, adaptive gardening techniques are for small time gardeners. But sometimes, the end results can be greater than you first thought. I'm still trying to get back to the production levels here as I had on my old property. It will happen. It just takes time. I'm patient. Hear that God! I'm being patient. If you are physically impaired, it's the only way to get something good out of a bad situation. Gardening adaptively, let's you produce your own food. Maybe not most of it like we do, but even if you produce one tomato, it's gonna be the best tasting tomato you have ever eaten. Plus, you know where it came from, how it was grown, and you tried something new. So what are you waiting for? Let's get down and dirty.

Y'all have a blessed day!

6 Reasons Why We Use Elevated Raised Beds For Herbs

We plant our harvesting herbs in raised beds. That is with the exception of our spearmint,  peppermint, rosemary and a few others.You may wonder why.

• We are two sexagenarian (60-ish) women- Herbs like oregano, thyme and most herbs grow low to the ground barely a foot to two foot tall. That's a lot of bending in caring for and harvesting herbs. For me, it poses a fall hazard with half my body paralyzed.

• Pallets are an easy to come by, a reusable commodity, and they are free. We recycle old feed sacks to line the inside to hold the soil. 

• Weed infestation- Granted birds or wind will carry weed seed into the raised beds but not near as much as if they were planted in the ground.

•  Contains growth- Many herbs are spreading plants. They'll self propagate either through root spread or by stem. Oregano is a bad herb for this. Using elevated raised beds contains this growth. If the herb goes to seed, then the reseeding is mostly within the bed.

• We use the area underneath each elevated raised area to compost. It's an unseen composter.  Since we are strictly organic in our growing practices, we use a lot of compost. No unsightly piles or bins. It's all hidden under the elevated raised beds.

• By unseen composting under the elevated raised bed, we are able to plant these beds sooner because of the warmth of the composting process under the beds. Perennial herbs come back sooner after the winter thaw.

For us, elevated raised beds takes a lot of the work out of growing herbs. You may wonder why we just don't go ahead and plant all of our herbs this way. Well, there's a method to our cockeyed thinking.

Rosemary, when left to it's own nature, is a woody herb. It will form a hedge over five foot tall over years. It also self propagates by stems touching the soil. In this way it could be invasive, but controllable. At my old homestead, it was my front hedge.


Mint on the other hand is wildly invasive. But mints also deter rats and mice. That's why we plant it around our house and storeroom building.  It will grow two feet high so harvesting isn't that much of an issue for my five foot frame.

We grow feverfew the same way. In case you didn't know, Feverfew helps with headaches and migraines. According to WebMD...
"Feverfew is a plant that is native to Asia Minor and the Balkans, but is now common throughout the world. Feverfew leaves are normally dried for use in medicine. Fresh leaves and extracts are also used.

People take feverfew by mouth for the prevention and treatment of migraine headaches.

People also take feverfew by mouth for fever, irregular menstrual periods, arthritis, a skin disorder called psoriasis, allergies, asthma, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), dizziness, and nausea and vomiting.

Some people take feverfew by mouth for difficulty getting pregnant or fathering a child (infertility). It is also taken by mouth for "tired blood" (anemia), cancer, common cold, earache, liver disease, prevention of miscarriage, muscular tension, bone disorders, swollen feet, diarrhea, upset stomach, and intestinal gas.

Feverfew is sometimes applied directly to the gums for toothaches or to the skin to kill germs. It is also applied to the skin for itching and to prevent insect bites.

Some people also use feverfew as a general stimulant and for intestinal parasites."

All I know is it's a handy herb to have on hand. We plant this herb around our Camillas. It does double duty as a pretty border plant and a medicinal one. It also makes a tasty tea.

The other herb that is strongly invasive and we do not contain is comfrey. But plant it exclusively in our orchard. While semi contained by the tiers, we don't actively contain it. Look up the health benefits and warnings.


The last herb we let naturalize is lemon grass. It's clumping nature and mosquito repelling property are a welcome addition to wherever it grows. It's delicious when added to chicken or fish dishes. Look up theh medicinal uses and warnings.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Essentials in Adaptive Gardening

HAPPY EASTER Y'ALL. HE IS RISEN!

When gardening with disabilities, there are a few things that are essential and a long list of things that are really helpful. As many of you readers now know, I'm living post stroke. In other words, I'm partially paralyzed on my dominant right side.

You won't find me on my knees or squatting to plant vegetables unless I've fallen and can't get up. I will lean over or use my thigh muscles and knees to crouch down or lean closer to the ground, but not so much to lose my balance. In doing this I always have a sturdy hoe or rake to steady myself.

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You won't find me making things easier on myself by using a standard wheel barrow either. I don't have two working hands to operate one. Instead, I have an alternative. It's new for me, because I got jealous of Mel having all the fun. It's also an easier way to bring groceries up to the house. Notice this has two wheels for better balance. In a pinch, it can steady me if I lose my balance. If my load is heavy enough, it can also help me get on my feet again. Now, I'm not expecting most disabled folks to do this. I'm just too independent and impatient to wait on someone else to do it for me.

Some disabled folks, even me at times, use elevated raised beds as the way to garden. I tend to plant low growing things like

herbs, salad goods, carrots, and strawberries in them. It's just easier to care, weed, and harvest from them. But honestly, I can't see doing all my vegetables in one. There just isn't enough space in them to produce what we need in a year. This year, I've planted strawberries in a elevated raised bed made from pallets. I've also made my potato boxes out of them. Nothing beats free. If it can be done cheaper, I'm all for it. Unlike the elevated raised bed pictured on the left that will set you back $100+.

Notice the straw in between the slats. It's old composting straw and chicken dropping from the hen house. There is also a three-foot layer of this at the bottom as a compost pile. Only the top foot and a half is a mature compost and soil. As the bottom layer composts the level of the top layer will drop. Then next year, I'll  grow sweet or regular potatoes in it. I'll mound it up as they grow. Pretty nifty, huh? Waste not; want not. The pallets themselves are screwed together with long screws. and baling wire on one end. In case we want to move it.

Some tools you will need is a hand trowel, pruners, gloves (although I rarely wear 'em), and something that will hold water. I'm able to lift a two gallon watering can but pouring the water where I want it when full is chancy. I prefer carrying an old, gallon milk or juice jug with me, or just use the sprayer on the hose for the out of the way areas where my sprinkler doesn't reach.

Now about shovels and hoes. First of all, I'm short (5 ft nothing) and I'm one handed doing most of this. The regular length of the handles on these items are too long for me to work effectively and efficiently. The same thing goes
for leaf rakes, brooms, and mops. I could buy those terrific, adaptive gardening tools (an expensive option), but I'm cheap. I just chop a couple feet off the handles of regular tools. I bought an old, camp shovel from the second hand store. I think I paid $5 for it with its canvas cover to boot. It just needed some TLC and WD-40. It works perfectly for those times I want to move more soil than my little hand trowel. It's also handy for other times too. The handle takes the awkwardness out of digging with my nondominant hand and gives me better control.

A gardening stool like the one pictured is too low to the ground, even flipped, for me to rise from easily. Plus the legs have a nasty way of sinking into the garden walkways. So again, my second hand store to the rescue. They had a heavy plastic toy box for $2.50.  A couple of bolts, washers, nuts and some wheels later. I have a place for most of my tools and harvesting too. I drilled a couple large holes in one side and threaded some clothes line through it for pulling ease. The double plastic wall holds my lard butt and more. Another cheap fix.

I've given up on peat pots for starting seeds this year and seed starting trays. This year, I'm trying something new. I built a soil block maker. For years, I've sworn by my biodegradable toilet and paper towel core pots as a way to start seeds, but I saw this idea on YouTube where they used PVC pipe to make them. But I thought of a better way and cheaper. Each month I refill my prescription of Lovaza for my cholesterol. It comes in either the big manufacture package as shown or, I imagine, the largest prescription bottle made. Since my pharmacist doesn't cap my prescription in child proof caps, my request. I always used to hand my childproof lidded caps to my grandchildren to open. The inner lid  fits snugly into the inside of the bottle. I was saving my prescription bottles for MAP International, who recycles these bottles to third world countries, I simply cut the narrowed end off with an Xacto knife and drilled a hole in the other end for a long bolt. Now making a hundred or so soil blocks would be tedious beyond belief, I made four of them and held them together with duct tape. To press all four bolts down at the same time, I simply attached all four bolts through a piece of 1x4. Voila! I can make four blocks at a time. They are 2 1/2" around by 2" high. Much bigger than the cell seed starting trays shown above. So now I can make four at a time in one go. It also stands up better with four.

I'm not the first one to make this

As far as operating my new toy one handed, I put a row of hot glue near the plunger end of the bottles and cut strips of burlap to wrap around them. That way I can hold the plunger down with my thumb and anchor the tubes with my little finger as I pull the contraption upwards to release the pots. I do plan on doing a video of this. Both the making of the soil block maker and using it. All it cost me, other than the original prescription, was $4.00 for four bolts and nuts. I had assorted washers in one of Mel's soup can holders in her shop. Duct tape, burlap, and hot glue gun and glue sticks, we had on hand also. What self respecting homesteader and/or crafter doesn't have these? I found bolts and nuts around the shop, but not all the same length that I needed. If I had had them, it would have been a free, totally recycle/repurpose project. So this soil block maker used up some of my chomping-a-the-bit waiting to plant time. But it was well worth it. I'll still recycle my toilet paper and paper towel cores, but for rabbit toys and fire starters. With only two people in a household, we don't go through paper products that fast. Plus, like many self reliant folks, we use cloth alternative more except for toilet paper.

Where there is a will and a little bit of creativity; there is a way.  So disabled folks out there...what are you waiting on? Well that's it for this week. As always...

Y'all have a blessed day!