Courtney, there is a great Companion Planting forum here on GW and I'm sure that a lot of folks here have wonderful advice too :) The site that I'm linking below has a table that simplifies things.

And the "Three Sisters" are Corn, Squash and Beans. The Corn supports the bean vines, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the heavy feeding corn and squash, and the squash provides mulch and protection for the roots of the corn and beans. It's usually better to create a flat topped hill and plant your corn first, so it has time to grow a little before the beans start needing support. About two weeks later you can plant the beans, that way they're growing and "out of the way" for the squash to be planted a week later. You'll need to use climbing beans rather than bush beans. The corn is planted in the middle of the hill, the beans to the edge of the top of the hill, circling the corn. Then the squash is planted around the side of the hill. Having any more than two bean vines supported by the corn will just kind of choke it out and you'll need to guide it so it starts climbing. Three Sisters is more making optimal use of space and each plant providing something the others need to increase yield.

Companion planting is similar, but adds that the plants will protect from insects or add to the flavor or yield of the companion plant. Adding herbs and flowers to the veggie patch help control harmful insects. Marigolds are always a wonderful plant to use. I've used Three Sisters and companion planting together for many years. I usually plant a few marigolds around the hill as well as some borage and summer savory.

Hope this helped!

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: Companion Planting Chart

Courtney,

Companion planting can be done for various reasons. For example, many gardeners plant basil next to tomatoes because it is supposed to improve their growth and flavor. One of my favorite forms of companion planting is using plants with tiny flower, like sweet alyssum, to attract beneficial insects to the garden.

You have to be careful, though, with the choices you make. For example, tansy is a great companion plant, but it becomes a huge monster....about 4' tall with an equal spread in my veggie garden.....so it can be difficult to put it in the right spot where it won't crowd out something else. I have the same problem with lemon balm, which I love, but which really gets big and shrubby.

For every item you plant, there is a companion plant to accompany it. So, if you'll tell us what you're planting, we can suggest good companion plants for those specific crops.

Three Sisters gardening is fun and I look at it as a way to grow three crops in space normally reserved for one. Like Kathy, I have done it for ages. I just grow my corn in regular rows in a rectangular bed with pumpkins and winter squash planted at regular intervals all around the perimeter of the bed. Sometimes, I plant one row of pumpkins right down the middle of the corn bed too, just to get the area to fill in before the raccoons arrive. The pumpkins and winter squash grow into the corn and make a nice "ground cover" in and around the corn. Of particular interest to me is the fact that the raccoons don't like the large coarse leaves of the pumpkins and winter squash, so those plants help "protect" the corn from the coons.

One of the reasons the Three Sisters planting combination works is that corn plants are heavy feeders and take a lot of nitrogen and other nutrients out of the soil....and beans are heavy givers because they fix nitrogen in their roots, so the beans are helping replenish the soil which partly makes up for what the corn takes out of the soil. Some years I put in pole beans alongside every 2nd or 3rd corn plant once the corn is a foot or maybe 18" tall, and sometimes I grow the pole beans on the fence or on poles.

Some people don't like Three Sisters planting because you have to step over the pumpkin plants to harvest the corn, but it doesn't bother me. It only takes a couple of trips through the corn patch to pick all the ears, and if I step on a pumpkin vine, it generally survives. I also think that the beans climbing the corn can help hide the ears from the raccoons, although a really determined raccoon WILL find the corn and, often, will tear down the beans to get to the corn. (You probably don't even have raccoons in your garden, Courtney, so I guess it isn't an issue for you, but they're a huge problem here, and the Three Sisters planting is one way to battle them.) Actually, I add a Fourth Sister....sunflowers, just as the Native Americans often did. They used sunflower seeds as a key source of nutrition, and some of them extracted and used sunflower oil as well. I put the 4th "sister" around the outer perimeter, planting sunflowers alternately with winter squash and pumpkin plants.

If you want to read an excellent book about the way that one tribe of Native Americans raised and tended their Three Sisters garden, I highly recommend the book BUFFALO BIRD WOMAN'S GARDEN. I read it and reread it after moving here and finally having the space for a really big garden, and thoroughly enjoyed it. For me, it wasn't just interesting to learn about how they gardened, but also to read about the different ways they combined their squash, corn, beans and sunflowers to make different meals.

Sometimes I plant broom corn just for the beans to climb. The broom corn doesn't set seed until my regular corn has already pollinated, and the broom corn gets really tall so the beans can climb and climb. As a bonus, the seed heads from the brook corn make lovely fall decorations, or if you plant a lot of broom corn, you can make your own broom. (I don't plant that much!)

I love companion planting, but I have to be really careful with it during drought because too many plants competing for too little water in times of severe to exceptional drought becomes a huge issue.

We discuss companion planting every spring, so I found one of the old discussions and linked it below. You might find some helpful info there.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Companion Planting Discussion