Country Living Skills

We just wanted to share a picture from our garden

We like beans. So do slugs… Since we do not intent to lose our beans to them, we make access to the beans as uncomfortable for the slugs as possible. How ? Well, we sprinkle crushed eggshells all around our plants. All winter we collected eggshell so now we have enough to protect our beans… If you too have a slug problem, you better start eating eggs and keeping the shells.

If you don’t have eggshells because you don’t eat eggs, or don’t eat enough eggs, really anything dry or sharp will work because slugs don’t like to crawl over anything dry or sharp. Dry grass clippings will work, and so will lime, just to give you two examples.

Generally speaking, you can plant zucchini, squash, pumpkin and gourd a plant per foot. Note that zucchini does not vine, whereas squash, pumpkin and gourds, do.

IN ROWS:

• 18 inches between rows for zucchini, squash and gourd
• 12 inches apart
• plant 3-5 seeds, thin out if necessary

Pumpkins are usually planted in hills dues to their size. Leave plenty of space for them to vine.

Corn, Beans and squash, pumpkin or zucchini together make what is commonly called “The Three Sisters”. Here is how you plant a three sister mound:

1. In late May/ early June, pile up soil a foot high and 20 across. Place the mounds four feet apart, flatten the tops.

2. Plant five to six corn kernels in a small circle.

3. When the corn has grown about five inches (about a week or two later), plant seven to eight pole beans in a circle around the corn, about six inches away.

4. At the edge of the mound, a foot away from the beans, squash or pumpkin seeds, seven to eight all in all.

5. Weed out the weaker plants once they have grown enough to tell which are strong and which are weak plants.

6. Wrap the beans around the corn stalks as they grow. The squash will crawl around corn and beans.