The Three Sisters are a trio of staple crops - corn, beans, and squash - originating from Mesoamerica, named in the Great Lakes region by the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois), and grown by many cultures in between! They complement each other agriculturally, nutritionally, and culinarily, and can be dried and preserved through the winter - it's pretty easy to understand why they're called sisters, when they work so well together! Sometimes other sisters are also included, though their identities vary by region. Sunflowers, for example, are used as a fourth sister to provide shade in the heat of the afternoon and to attract pollinators.

The exact method of planting varies by the agricultural demands of a given region. In the Southwest, the sisters are often each planted in their own field (rotated every year, of course!) to best make use of the limited rainfall; in the Great Lakes region, where rainfall is plentiful, the sisters are planted together in large mounds to prevent the roots from becoming waterlogged. In the latter method, which is a type of companion planting, the corn provides a trellis for the beans, the beans take nitrogen from the air and add to the soil (especially important with corn, which is very nitrogen-hungry!), and the squash's large, shady leaves keep moisture in and weeds out. Note how this means that, with no additional work, you already need less fertilizers and less herbicides!

(The above information comes from Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving traditional agricultural biodiversity in the Southwest! Check that link out if you're interested, they've got a lot more information than I could fit into one dragon bio!)





i'll write up a companion bit on the choice of birch as the tree on this gal at some point in the future whoops

rename Papyrifera if I get a breeding pair together (betula papyrifera)