New Row of Potatoes with 3 Plants per Cone

New Row of Potatoes with 3 Plants per Cone

Mini Cone Greenhouses 

• protect seed from frost
• add Crop Heat Units (CHUs)
• enable two crops per season

[Working on CHU calculations to see how much is being added.]

The Three Sisters Companion Planting Plan

I started with the intent to grow early potatoes but I now plan to utilize The Three Sisters Companion Planting Plan for most of the other Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouses I set out this year. Take a look at this, it sure makes a lot of sense to me and you might want to try it yourself this year.

Is this your first gardening adventure?

If you are embarking on your first gardening venture with the Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse, you might consider trying this ancient method of ‘companion planting’ gardening, said to have been introduced to the first European settlers of North America by the First Nations Peoples, who had been gardening here, for eons… This method is now often called ‘The Three Sisters’, because of the close companion nature of the plants that are set together, and their helpfulness to each other, in many ways, while they are growing. The plants are: corn [maize], pole beans, and squash or pumpkin. 

Planting Procedure:

   Till a circle 62cm./2 ft. in diameter, in the sunny spot you’ve chosen for your Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse, and slightly  ‘hill’ the circle you’ve tilled with some loam, potting soil or some compost. Plant one corn seed in the center, and then, surrounding this, three concentric circles. You will be planting the corn, first. Plant 3-5 seeds of corn, placing one seed in the center, and the remaining few seeds in the ‘inner circle’. When the corn is up [one to two weeks, depending on temperatures], plant five or six pole beans, well-spaced, in the next circle [nearest to the corn], and plant four or five pumpkin or squash seeds in the third circle from the center, making certain that they are inside the cone, and not underneath the cone’s edge. Cover your seeds with soil, water them, and set the lid on the cone. Be certain to remove the lid on warm days, but always cover at night, until danger of frost is past.

Benefits:

   There are many ways that these three plants benefit each other, and all are remarkable, from their ‘give and take’ concerning different soil requirements to possible cooperative protection from pests, but most noticeable is how they grow. The corn provides structure for the ‘pole’ beans, making sticks or poles unnecessary, and the squash or pumpkin provides shade or ‘green mulch’, both making it difficult for weeds to gain a foothold, and also, shading the soil, which helps to retain moisture.

Follow Up:

   When the corn reaches the height of the lid at the top of the cone, carefully remove the Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse. It’s ready for use somewhere else in the garden, or will wait for your plans for fall planting.

Mini Cone Greenhouse in Perspective

If this is your first visit to this blog then I would recommend that to put the Mini Cone Greenhouse in perspective, you should start at the oldest post and scan forward so that its development can be seen chronologically.

Also, I still need to redo the temperature survey but by now I am convinced that even without the lid the ground inside should stay unfrozen.

Mini Lid Greenhouse for Grass

I went looking for a lid to put on a new Mini Cone Greenhouse that I was setting up over cuttings for a Quince hedgerow, and when I found one that had been lying on the ground and picked it up, here is what I found:

Lush Green Grass!!

So, here is the idea.

If you want to have an early green lawn because you like the satisfaction of having a freshly mowed grass lawn, or you want your grass to get growing so you can feed your sheep or goats, then cover the ground with Mini Lid Greenhouses.

Step 1

Place a Mini Lid Greenhouse on the ground where your already have grass.

Step 2

Get a long spike and a hammer.

Step 3

Insert the spike through the oval hole in the Mini Lid Greenhouse.

 Step 4

Drive spike into ground using a hammer.

Step5

Wait for the Grass to grow.

 Step6

Remove Min Lid Greenhouse when grass starts to lift lid off ground.

If you have a field to cover then you might do a whole bunch of lids at once.

Put a spike in each lid.

Do you see the two that I missed?

Four rows done. 

Now to stop taking pictures and get the rest of the Mini Lid Greenhouses installed.