The Sage is Peeking Through the Marker

Hi from Firequeen

Hi Bob, thanks for the invite, managed to sign in an all so here I am! Planning a special bed on our land to plant Three Sisters - a friend brought two sacks of rabbit manure over today, to fertilise it. I'm recording everything in my garden blog on my website at http://www.pendlepeople.com/firequeen/gardenblog.htm

Pendle refers to the area where I live, it's called Pendle after the big hill round which the towns are dotted. It's a very rural area, pretty, with small rolling slopes and lots of trees - green everywhere, with lambs skipping everywhere at the moment. We are in Lancashire, that's in the North of England, and the towns are the old industrial cotton towns, but the countryside is beautiful with lots of cycling and walking. Our land is beside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, it is a piece of farmland, cut off from the rest of the farm when the railway went through over a hundred years ago, and not cultivated for a very long time.

I love your blog Bob, and am so glad I found you and your corn.

Geraldine (Firequeen)

Planting the 3 Sisters

From the Fire Queen :

Hi Bob, thanks for the corn which arrived yesterday. A friend in Texas wrote me that :
Corn the Indian way was to plant a couple of seeds,a dead fish in the same hole and a few beans very close (or in the same hole.?)

Any comments? Sounds like it would be fun to do, so plan to get a few pounds of sprats down the fishmongers for when we plant out. Being Britain, going to plant and raise first indoors then outside under cover until strong enough to face the weather. (plants that is not me!)

Thanks so much for this gift across the divide.

Fire -
You're on to 2/3's of what is called " The 3 Sisters ". Check out this video I shot , I'm planting seedlings, but the technique is the way the Indians of the southwest farmed the dry river beds. Corn was planted in a "hill" usually a circle 2 to 3 feet across. Mixed in with the corn, they planted squash, and beans. Digging out the hill, and adding manure, mulch, fish, and other fertilizers was done widely. I'd let the fish sit in the ground a few days before I planted on top of it. Corn loves nitrogen, and the beans the Indians were using probably had legume properties. I.E. nitrogen fixing bacteria in their roots.
Try a circle with 5 or 6 corn plants in it, space out the plantings. In different holes plant 3 or 4 beans, 3 or 4 squash.
Corn and beans combine to make complete protein needs in humans. This is how the peoples of Mexico achieved such large populations.
Image credit

David Sadler

A big thank-you to David Sadler of Hobbs, New Mexico, for carving this wonderful monument for our garden.
Sadler & Son Monument Works


Spring Planting 2010

This Month's Booth

Sold some Airplane Plants .... Woo Hoo .


Scouts toasting mellows at Tony's Fire Table.

Blue Corn Goes Global & Other Assorted Things

The Mexican White Masa Corn
One week every seed up , all 76 of them.
Again thank-you Clare in Benson.



Pretty interesting emails this season, I was able to help Joel at Tuthilltown Sprits. He was looking for enough seed to make a batch of whiskey. Blue Corn Lighting ! I remembered these guys, Sunny State Products, from when I was setting up this thing last year.

Around the same time, a fellow in Paris contacted me for some ears with the seed still on the cob. Adrien was working with a French artist named Camille Henrot. I sent them a dozen ears yesterday, shucks and all.

I had a request from Geraldine in Nelson, Lancashire, UK. The first time for the UK.
James in Hamden, CT
Travis in Salt Lake, Ut
Valerie in Grinnell, IA 
Bill in Grass Valley, Ca

I'll send invites to post on the site to you all. Now I guess I'll work on the map, lots of pins to add.

My Friends Made Me Cry Today

I found this little strip on Buddy Holy Ave. , and I tried to green it up, like my mother taught me.
I'll say more , when I stop crying.