Milpa Garden Mix: Grow Corn, Beans, and Squash Together
Noah Young walks you through Green Cover's Milpa Garden Mix and shows you how the three sisters work together. Learn why corn, beans, and squash complement each other nutritionally and agronomically, and how this ancient system builds soil health while producing food on a small piece of land.
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0:03 Hi guys, Noah young here with green cover. So today I'm going to talk to you about our milpa garden mix. Now the word milpa is actually from the Nahuatl word.
0:12 Phrase mill pop which translates to cultivated field a few thousand years ago in southern Mexico and Central America. The term meant maize field but
0:22 Really referred to not just a field planted with corn but also squash, beans, and a variety of other plants by the time European settlers were living in.
0:30 North America the milpa concept had grown up the coast until people were planning the three sisters corn squash and beets. So what makes this milpa.
0:40 Garden so unique well, corn is an excellent grain crop but it can't produce its own nitrogen and it lacks the amino acids lysine and
0:48 Tryptophan which your body needs to produce proteins and niacin being a legume crop will produce nitrogen and lysine and tryptophan squash for their.
0:58 Part is an excellent food crop that is high in vitamins and minerals. Not only are these plants nutritionally complementary, but actually they grow.
1:16 Other vining crops will fill in any gaps in the soil surface smothering and shading out weeds. Here at green cover seed we offer a diverse milpa mix with.
1:25 The following items. This is an excellent way to get some produce out of a small piece of land with minimal amounts of labor. We've had some excellent feedback.
1:33 From people saying how much they love taking their kids into their chaos garden almost like a treasure hunt, looking for fresh produce.
1:41 Planning your spring mix, consider milpa as a fun way to get fresh produce and also improve your soil health. In fact, the soil health benefits of a milpa concept are so profound that there are fields in Mesoamerica that have been continuously milpa for the last four thousand years and they're still producing a good crop. So if you want to learn more about milpa, feel free to contact us, call our office at 402-469-6784 or visit our website at greencover.sitcom.