Five hills of zucchini — Is this crazy talk?
Posted on April 26th, 2009 – 11:15 PMBy Jaime Chismar
Today’s post comes from GG reader Jennifer Twin Mom. She’s a green gardener who can grow perfect parsnips. This year, she wants to experiment with the three sisters method — a interplanting technique for corn, squash and beans developed by Native Americans.
Her plan involves planting FIVE HILLS OF ZUCCHINI — Is this crazy talk? Please weigh in fellow GG readers!
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From Jennifer Twin Mom:
When I originally envisioned this year’s garden, my plan was to build some support system on the south side of my house so that my pole beans and zucchini could climb up it and bask in the hot sun. Yesterday my husband (who I suspect is trying to get out of having to build the aforementioned support system) suggested that we try The Three Sisters.
I know that I can’t expect a huge crop of corn, considering the size and shape of my garden, but I like the idea of corn even from just an aesthetic perspective, so I’m OK with that (hey, I grew up in farm country).
Here is a diagram of my garden:
And here are my questions:
1. What kind of spacing should I use? I’m planting in two rows that aren’t next to each other. I want to plant corn, zucchini, and I already have “Hidatsa Shield Figure” heirloom climbing beans (that I am super excited about).
2. Should I start anything indoors or just direct sew everything?
3. What if I tried sunflowers instead of corn? Would the beans like to climb sunflowers? Aesthetically, they also appeal to me quite a bit.
4. According to my diagram I have 5 hills of zucchini. Am I going to seriously regret this? It seems like a lot! I had only planned on doing 1 or 2. Can zucchini be preserved somehow?
9 Responses to "Five hills of zucchini — Is this crazy talk?"
[…] Greengirls – […]
You will have a lot of zucchini! I would say to make sure you pick the zucs when they are still little and more tender. My mom always let a few get big and then shredded and froze them for things like zucchini bread or zucchini fritters in the winter.
The three sisters method works great as long as your tall plant is strong enough to hold the climbing vines. I’ve only seen it done with corn, but I think as long as the sun flowers were going to robust, that should work too.
Direct-sow everything(although “sewing” as method would be very secure! 
) once the ground is warm. These are all such fast growers, I don’t think there’s a benefit to starting things indoors. That goes for sunflowers, too.
Yep, that’s a lot of zucchini, but the blossoms prepared tempura style are tasty and of course prevent fruiting. Checking every day for fruit is critical to prevent being overwhelmed with the two-footers.
I should think that as long as you grow tall, sturdy sunflowers, they should work. One of the reasons the 3 sisters are grown together is for the beans to fix nitrogen for the heavy-feeding corn, which of course will not be needed for the flowers. It would be fun to try both methods! Good luck!
FIVE zucchini? Are you NUTS?? I supposed you could play ding-dong ditch with your neighbors or better yet, donate to a local food shelf. There is a request from numerous food shelves over the state to “plant a row for the hungry.” Red Wing had great success with this last year via their Master Gardeners and a small chunk of space in their community garden plot.
I don’t think I’m going to do 5 zucchini hills. I am wimping out, but I’m also nervous about the vines completely taking over my garden. The more I think about this, the more I realize I really don’t have room for that many zucchini. I may replace one or two of the hills along the fence with a tomato or two, which I’ve only recently realized that I completely forgot to plan for in my much-labored-over garden plan.
I had no idea that you “sow” a seed vs. “sew”-ing it. Good to know!
JTM: glad I saved you from trying to stitch together all that vegetable matter!
You might think twice about the sunflowers. It’s my understanding they may stunt the beans. And you’ve made a good decision to minimize the zukes - I had a friend who planted a 20′ row once. As a farm girl, she should have known better, but it’s a good thing they had cows…
5 hills of zucchinis is a bit frightening, glad you decided to minimize! i’m planting just one, because my mom and i will be the only ones eating it.
Has anyone checked out plangarden.com to plan their space?
Greengirls Connie Nelson, Robyn Dochterman and Jaime Chismar are dishin' the dirt from the backyard garden and beyond. Whether you're a greenthumb or greenhorn, they're eager to learn from your misshaps, mistakes -- and most importantly, your sweet successes -- all growing season long.
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