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2023-2024 Common Read - Braiding Sweetgrass: The Three Sisters

"I want the Three Sisters to know that we’ve heard their story. Use your gift to take care of each other, work together, and all will be fed, they say." p. 139

Three Sisters companion planting technique by Anna Juchnowicz

The Three Sisters are beans, squash and corn.

Image courtesy of USDA

Variety of squash

Chiswick Chap, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Corn

inkknife_2000 (7.5 million views +), CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Three Sisters Garden

Myotus, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Keywords

Circumnutation: when the growing parts of plants form spirals or curves. (YA)

Curvilinear: consisting of or bounded by curved lines : represented by a curved line. (MW)

Endosperm: the part of the plant seed that provides food for the embryo. (OL)

Enzymes: chemical substances in plants that help cause a natural process. (YA)

Germinate: to cause to sprout or develop. (YA)

Manifest: to make evident or certain by showing or displaying. (MW)

Monocot: an overgrown grass whose roots are fine and fibrous with a single (mono) embryonic leaf. (YA)

Rhizobium: soil bacteria that attaches to the root system of legumes and change nitrogen into a form that the plant can use. (YA)

Scabrous: rough to the touch. (MW)

Symbiosis: when two kinds of living organisms live in an association that is beneficial for both. (YA)

Taproot:  primary root that grows vertically downward and gives off small lateral roots. (MW)

Topography: the configuration of a surface including its relief and the position of its natural and man-made features. (MW)

Transcend: to rise above or go beyond the limits of. (MW)

Turgid:  being in a state of distension :swollen. (MW)

An Oneida Elder Speaks About the Three Sisters Garden

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