Hi-- this is my first post on this forum and I just signed up. Hopefully this is the right place to post this, there were a lot of choices. This is both a heritage gardening technique and the plants are all heritage varieties (all the seeds in this section of the garden came from SSE)

So, part of my outside garden this year I decided to plant a Three Sisters garden in part of my big raised bed. I found a lot of conflicting info about this on the internet. What I ended up doing was using a section of bed four feet wide and about...ten feet long. I made two mounds about twenty inches high, flat on top, and about three feet across.

At the edge of the flat part, I planted corn seeds (Mandan Bride from SSE, its a dent corn). On the sloping sides, I planted some squashes, and mixed in with the corn on top, I planted some pole beans.

In between the mounds and on the short ends of the mounds, I planted some lettuces. On one long edge of the bed, I planted arugula, and on the other, five color chard.

Before I planted I dug in loads of well rotted manure and compost and turned every thing over pretty thoroughly.

Initially, I was nervous about germination, and I wasn't sure what the end density was supposed to be. As far as I can tell, intercropping systems like Three Sisters are designed to be more densely planted then row crops. My plan was to see how things started to come in and thin it to an acceptable size.

Basically, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I'm also not sure how much thinner it has to be, and if there will be any chance I can transplant some of the plants.

The garden is growing insanely fast. The plants I planted from seed are substantially larger already than plants I planted the same day from largish seedlings from the garden center. We've had really good growing conditions in my area and the plants so far seem to love being interplanted this way and in this soil.

Take a look at this pic. How much do you think I should thin this? I wish I planted the corn further ahead of everything (I gave it a week), because its not far enough ahead of the beans to start training them around it, and I'm worried that the big squash leaves are restricting the corn's access to sun.

I'm getting worried that if I leave this to grow like this, the plants will start to choke each other and limit food production. The last thing I want is a load of leaves and no food (this has happened to when I planted some tomatoes in containers before, huge green bushes with like one tomato). The corn is tighter together than the seed package recommends (slightly), but its in a block for pollination. Also, there's an active hive of carpenter bees about six feet from the garden, and they are supposed to be good pollinators, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, I have no experience with this style of gardening, so looking at this pic and reading this description, any advice you guys have would be super appreciated.

Thanks in advance.