Birdsonghill
Crowing
I have had great success with three sister gardening with heirloom field corn , corn field pole beans and Seminole pumpkins for many years. I don't do it every year now as it is more labor for me in my older age now. I do grow those crops every year but not in the three sisters method of mounds in a circular garden pattern. I would still be doing it every year if I was younger and had the back for it. Mechanical cultivation of the corn is far easier on me and I now grow the pumpkins and beans under heavy mulch or plastic mulch to save labor. The three sisters method produced well for me and was better than growing in rows without mulch, but still needed hand weeding until everything was up large and very well started and my large garden made that miserable. If I was an Indian of old days and could not till to cultivate the rows or use ground covering mulch, I would do this three sisters method always. I grow more corn than I eat every year, mostly as corn bread or grits. Also pumpkins and pole beans that last me all year and more. Actually , I should admit that this past summer a tornado destroyed most of my corn crop and for the first time in years no big surplus crop. I fed the remains to the deer.I am from Vermont, we had great soil and only add fresh cow manure from our lovely ladies, tilled it in then planted stuff and had an amazing amount of fresh veggies all summer and canned and frozen veg all winter, then I moved to Phoenix via NYC, where I lived for years, so I did not have a garden for 20 years. We bought a little property in South Carolina out in the country and we put in a garden the first year we were here, it was pretty poor the first year a lot of work and wasted money. LOL I found a lot of sites like: https://www.almanac.com/companion-planting-guide-vegetables to be really helpful.
Our soil was not the best so we started composting immediately to great effect, and we are getting older, so we built raised beds. We did "Lasagna gardening" layered cardboard, tree limbs from tree trimming, we made a vent tube with chicken wire so that we could feed additional composting material down to the bottom layer (this is meant to replenish the nutrients in your soil, then added compost, top soil, and good soil. The garden output improved but was still not great. We plant marigolds and other pollinators in and around all the beds.
Last year, we found out about companion planting and started with the 3-sisters (Sweet corn, zucchini and green beans.), this worked great, we actually had enough corn to freeze some. This year, every thing has a companion and our garden has really taken off.