Did the Three Sisters Method Actually Work? 🌽 (First Sweetcorn Harvest!)

Hello and welcome to another afternoon down the old man's lot and today is an important day because I'm pulling a sweet corn, come with me. As we make our way over, look at this mini pumpkin, this one's called a baby boo, I've remembered the name now. This one is called a little jack. It seems I've left my gate open. Asking for the squirrels to come in and have dinner now, can't believe I did that. I did the kernel test and that's where you pull back a bit and you pierce the kernel with your nail and if it's clear, the liquid comes out clear, it's not ready yet, you need to wait longer. If it comes out milky then it's perfect, the sugars are perfect, harvest it at peak ripeness now and if it's like pasty and thick then you've left it too long and this one was perfect when I checked it yesterday so I'm excited. This is the one I pulled, I mean well this is the one I tested. Here it is, moment of truth, this should be beautiful, let's have a look. That's a sweet corn, that is a whole corn on the cob, oh my goodness, look, I don't see like hardly any kernels missing, a couple up here but I can't complain about that honestly. So these bits, they're called the silks and each strand is connected to a kernel so when the pollen falls down onto the strand they are pollinated when they turn crispy brown like this ginger colour or a bit darker. Hey, matches, anyway so each strand has to be pollinated to make one of these sweet corns so it's so impressive that that's happened. I always give a little shake when I go in there just to make sure but it works, I've never grown sweet corn before, this is so so cool and I'm so proud of myself. Look at it, another thing about the silks is in like herbal medicine you can make tea from it so it's supposed to be really good for, I want to say menstrual cramps, like for cramping in the stomach and pain relief, I could be wrong but apparently, oh it smells like sweet corn, the tea tastes just like corn as well so it can be medicinal if you want to use the whole plant. I'm going to eat this fresh, I've never tried it raw before, so sweet, you need to be growing your own. Okay, now let's talk about how it grew. The way I grew this sweet corn was using three sisters method. Three sisters method if you're unaware is where you grow sweet corn and then you grow your beans to climb up the sweet corn and for ground cover you have your squash which would be your courgettes or such and that should like shade the bottom to reduce like all the water evaporating and to reduce some of the weeds as well. Usually we don't particularly do this in the UK because we don't need to, it's more of an American thing, it's actually Native American the practice I believe but I wanted to give it a go and here's how it went. So you can see this gorgeous courgette in there and all of the sweet corn is growing here, you can see beans are perfectly climbing using the sweet corn as a trellis. Some of the beans didn't take or they were pulled out because I had some squirrel damage in the beginning so I didn't actually get all my sweet corn plants to grow because the squirrels got quite a few of them but I've also had a random bean plant climb the cage. This is a bean plant growing on the outside of the cage and as you can see it's working very well. That counts as the three sisters but they're near the sweet corn and the squash. Either way it's worked, I've got sweet corn and it's gorgeous and I've got beans on and around them and I've got squash coming out of my ears. Turns out not that many people like courgettes. Thinking I need to get one of those chest freezers. So the question is did the three sisters work and would I do it again? Absolutely worked to a T. Would I do it again? Probably not, I think next year I'm going to do another extra two rows of the sweet corn because I love that and I don't need the extra squash. The beans, I'm definitely going to do as many as I did this year because they have been the gift that keeps on giving. Day after day after day, handfuls of beans and I love them, love them. If you're thinking of doing the three sisters method and you're not sure, do it! Experiments are fun, gardening is for learning and trying new things. Have some fun, try it. Necessary? I wouldn't say so. But I'm going to give that a rest now, I'm going to collect the rest of the food that needs collecting. More beans need to come home with me, a couple of courgettes need to come home with me. So stick around for the next minute or so to see my beautiful basket. Thank you so much for watching and follow along for more.