The Three Sisters Garden Project Update!

It took me about a week on my own, dedicating 2 hours each evening to clean a small swath of the huge garden space that Charlie and Lisa were kind enough to dedicate to the Three Sisters Gardening Project, a permaculture garden that will grow food for the hungry. I'd managed a 10 feet by 4 feet section to about 2 feet down, stripping out all the deep grass roots and other non food-producing water-suckers. It was tough, slow going until some friends and college buddies pitched in.

I'd like to thank Susan and Becca for bringing a truck load of mulch to the garden and offering future mulch hauls when needed. Then this morning Heather, an Eckerd school buddy and recent graduate, came over, and we went to Home depot and purchased some gardening tools, five big bags of Sphagnum Peat, scrap wood, and a tough mesh for building racoon, squirrel, and opossum proof mound covers.

We came back to the garden and worked our butts off. We had dug a strip of 10 feet, two feet down and leveled it, then lay in a bio watershed of palm fronds, big palm wood sheets, Spagnum Peat, city mulch, Banana plant and bird of paradise leaves, along with some natural cardboard sheets. This will insure water will be held in the soil for the roots of our specially selected, native, non GMO, organic plants that we will sprout from seed.

A few hours into heavy labor ;) and Heather's husband, Mike, showed up and took over the major shoveling while we mixed in water holding debris as we built up our first mound section. Mike will be building those, earlier mentioned, mound cages for us tomorrow. Progress is slow but steady. We'll prep and plant in sections like this until we get the whole garden up and growing.

If anyone would like to drop off their burnable tree wood, palm fronds, dirty non-salt fish tank water, palm wood sheets, banana and bird of paradise leaves, pine cones, tape-free & laminant free cardboard sheets and bits, etc... it would be greatly appreciated. The garden is on 50th street between 27th Ave and 28th Ave on the 28th side of the alley. Anything you wish to donate to the project, you can just drop it there and we will see it gets put to great use. You can also call and arrange for us to do a pick up, but we are reliant on truck access.

We now have a 100ft hose, thanks to my cousin, Grady and his wife, Rose Anne, in Keller Texas. Thank you Grady and Rose Anne!

I have posted pictures of the Three Sister's Garden's progress with more to come, for all of you that might be interested. It is a gardening project that will eventually produce healthy fresh food for the shelters and food pantries. Residents can enlist portions of their yard in the Three Sisters Project.

You may ask how we came up with the name Three Sisters. It represents the native american deities of corn, beans, and squash, grown together for their mutually beneficial growing habits and properties. The corn grows up. The beans climb the corn while adding nitrates back into the soil to feed the corn and squash. The squash's broad leaves, limit weed growth and sheild the earth from to much direct sun. This enables better water retention. By choosing heirloom natives, planting them in premodern, traditional and symbiotic ways, we get hardy, desease and pest resistant plants that require less energy to maintain. We received the last of our seed selction this very afternoon. We also managed to get our hands on the native Everglade Tomato.

I'd like to thank Bill from the Faith House Garden for giving us an extensive tour this past Wednesday. We really appreciated the discussion about laying in bio build-up to create our makeshift watershed.

Come join us. Collaborations and contributions are always welcome. Call Trace at 813-486-5437 or email me at tracetaylorpublishing@gmail.com.