PomArts launches Three Sisters garden project

A new gardening project is in the works at the artPARK on Main Street. PomArts, formerly the Pomerene Center for the Arts, is creating a Three Sisters Garden with Anne Cornell and friends as their first America250 event.

"There is a big community celebration in July we are preparing for from the 16th through the 19th,” Cornell said. “This evening we're starting the Three Sisters Garden, which is an ancient agricultural practice using companion plants. We are only planting corn tonight because corn you plant first and let it come up. As it starts to grow, you plant bean climbers close to the corn. You can use the corn as a stalk to climb up. The third plant is squash.

"The squash is their ground cover for weed control and to help maintain moisture for the other plants. The beans fix nitrogen into the soil to feed the other plants, so the little three sisters work together.”

The Three Sisters planting practice is called companion planting because corn, beans and squash, when planted together, are mutually beneficial to each other.

“We are planting ours on our solar mounds in the back garden near the alley,” Cornell said. “There is a new practice called agrivoltaics, using solar panel fields as an agricultural field as well. These three sisters like being in solar panels. The solar panels sort of become the fourth sister. It is very interesting.”

With the Three Sisters combination of maize, beans and squash, each crop plays a distinct role. Corn provides a tall stalk for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles. Beans harbor bacteria on their roots that pull nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form that fertilizes the soil for the corn and squash. Squash spreads its large leaves across the ground between the other two crops, acting as living mulch that suppresses weeds and slows moisture loss from the soil.

Instead of using farmland solely for agriculture or solely for solar, agrivoltaics places solar arrays in a way that maintains agricultural activities underneath or in between the panels.