Update on Three Sisters Garden

Well ... this was meant to be an experiment and, like many experiments, I don't expect to achieve full success the first time around.

I planted a small Three Sisters Garden this year ... my first with this concept (planting corns, beans and squash together as companion plants) and also my first time growing corn.  Things are really slow.  I intentionally planted it away from the rest of my vegetable garden to keep the critters away from the other goodies:

But I also didn't want it right behind my house, so it is off to the side in a not-super-sunny location.  It gets sun, just probably not the 8-14 hours the rest of my yard gets. 

I planted the corn (Golden Bantam) at the very end of May.  I would expect it to have been bigger than this??  Does it even look healthy as I have no idea!?

The bean plants are supposed to be able to grow up and around the corn stalks and the beans plants are almost as tall as the corn!! I originally planted Scarlet Runner beans.  But the crows got many of the seeds and I replenished with some Tarbais beans.  The only actual beans I have so far are the Tarbais (1st photo), but at least I am seeing some (though very few) of the pretty red flowers from the Scarlet Runners!

And the Red Kuri squash shown here below is not quite at the same stage as the other winter squash plants I have on the go ... I already have spaghetti squash that are 10 inches long and full size acorn squash.  I don't even have a possibility of a kuri squash here this year ... much less the long, windy vines that are supposed to cover the soil to hold in moisture and protect the other plants. In fact, these look a lot like the stunted summer squash plants I have - flowering but so tiny there is no way anything will form on it.

But there is still time, and with time comes hope (or so I keep saying to myself).  And I will try this again next year, so I will focus on what has gone wrong and make some improvements next time!