- Milpa bed: worth knowing
- Fruit Hold
- Aztec flower bed in the garden
- Create a Milpa bed
- sowing/planting
- fertilization
Help the development of the site, sharing the article with friends!
Fabian Hanneforth, Milpa in Quiche Guatemala, crop from Plantopedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Milpa bed looks back on a centuries-long history to the Indians, which is why it is also called the Indian bed. It offers a special cultivation method for certain mixed crops and brings with it special advantages that ensure less maintenance from fertile soil and more growth with increased crop yield. Creating your own Milpa bed is easy to do with the right instructions.
Milpa bed: worth knowing
The Aztec bed, as it is also called, originally comes from the tropics of Central and South America. There, the Indian cultivation method was used by the Mayas and Aztecs for mixed cultivation. The special highlight: the combination of beans, pumpkin and corn provides the soil with valuable substances or ensures properties that allow each of the plants to thrive particularly well.
Translated, Milpa means "the near field". This choice of words refers to the location of the bed because it was always placed close to housing and/or traditional vegetable beds, although it was more like an agricultural crop than a garden bed.
Fruit Hold
The "three sisters", as the mixed cultures are called by the Mayas and Aztecs, ideally complement each other in Milpa beds. With increasing height, the corn plant provides optimal climbing support for the bean plant. This legume supplies the soil with additional nitrogen, which ensures the development of many, large ears of corn and promotes the growth of the pumpkins.
The pumpkin forms a shade for the ground with its foliage. This has the advantage that it is protected from erosion and the soil also stays moist and cool. Furthermore, the three plant species complement each other in terms of pests and keep them at a distance.
Aztec flower bed in the garden
In the original style, it is difficult to create the special mixed culture bed in the home garden: the field used to lie fallow for two to four years and was then burned before it was used for cultivation again.
Milpa bed. Source: Paul Rogé, Milpa in Zaragoza, Tilantongo, crop from Plantopedia, CC BY 4.0
As a rule, these actions cannot be carried out in a garden, especially since setting fire is generally prohibited. When creating Indian beds in the house or allotment garden, you should therefore rethink and use alternatives or design the creation cleverly so that the same purpose can be fulfilled.
This alternative/cultivation is now well known and proven to be equally effective, which was not the case in the 1980's. At that time, the Indian bed moved into many a German garden, but mostly laid out on slopes. Enthusiasm was often lacking, so that this cultivation method lost interest among hobby gardeners and almost completely disappeared.
Create a Milpa bed
In order to create the Milpa bed, the following is required
- A sufficiently large area for cultivation
- Seeds of corn, beans and pumpkin
- Compost or ideally Terra Preta
- soil preparation
The soil is prepared as is usual with a conventional vegetable patch. In addition, a generous amount of compost is incorporated.
TIP: So that the soil and the superficial compost stays "in shape" and does not wash away with heavy downpours, it makes sense to limit the Indian bed. This can be done with impregnated wood or blocks of stone.
Terra Preta as soil
Terra Preta should not be confused with normal black earth, although they can hardly be distinguished from each other in terms of colour. With Terra Preta you can create the best conditions for creating a Milpa bed. This type of soil is excellent at storing moisture and is extremely rich in nutrients. It is relatively easy to produce yourself, but it must be prepared six months in advance in order to be used on time for the sowing date.
sowing/planting
The sowing and planting of the various types of vegetables takes place in stages.
Maize is the first of the three sisters to be planted in mid-April.
Mid-April: corn
The first thing to do is sow the corn seed in the Aztec bed, because it develops the slowest. Between mid and late April is the best time. It is important to pay attention to the planting distances between the individual types of vegetables and to take this into account when sowing, as this determines the arrangement.
How to sow:
- Row spacing: 50 to 55 centimeters
- Planting distance: 35 to 40 centimeters
- Press the seeds about an inch into the soil
- Cover lightly with soil
- If there is a risk of frost, cover with foil to prevent premature cultivation
- Open foil at higher temperatures
prebreeding
The corn seed can also be brought forward so that the seedlings are available more quickly as stable climbing aids. Around mid-March, soak the corn kernels in lukewarm water for around 12 hours and put the tips first in firmly pressed seed compost. They germinate after a few days and can be placed in the Indian bed four weeks later.
TIP: Sow the corn seeds individually and separately from each other, because they take root quickly after germination and are difficult or impossible to pull apart later. But this is necessary in order to be able to place them at a sufficient distance in the Aztec bed.
Early May: pumpkins
Around the end of the first week of May is the ideal time to sow pumpkins in the Aztec bed. There are numerous types of pumpkins. As the most suitable types of pumpkins, experienced amateur gardeners recommend:
- Hokkaido (Cucurbita maxima)
- Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata)
- UFO Squash (Patisson)
- Zucchini (Cucurbita pepo)
Patisson squash
The following must be observed when sowing:
- Set between the rows of corn plants
- Alternatively: sow at the very northern edge if the Milpa bed is very small
- Planting distance: 1 meter
- Sowing depth: three centimeters
- Each pumpkin plant should be at least two square meters in size
NOTICE: If you want to put pumpkins between the corn plants, make sure there is a correspondingly large space between them when sowing the corn. The row spacing of the corn seeds should be doubled to one meter.
prebreeding
If you want to plant pumpkins as seedlings in the Indian bed, you can grow them in pots between April 15th and 20th. Shortly after the Ice Saints in mid-May, we head out into the Milpa bed.
Mid-May: beans
The perfect time to sow beans is around May 10th, when the squash seed has already been sown.
Runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) are ideal for Milpa beds, as they have less proliferation than runner beans and are more robust and undemanding. After the plants in Milpa beds have created an almost unmanageable forest, colorful beans are generally easier to find later. While green runner beans work just as well, they're hard to see in the thicket of plants. There is nothing wrong with dry beans either, because they only have harvest time at the end of the season, when the other two types have already been harvested.
The optimal sowing looks like this:
- Sow seeds directly between corn plants
- Three bean seeds per planting hole
- Planting depth: one to two centimetres
- Planting distance: 40 centimeters between the beans
Finally, in mid-May, the beans are also sown.
TIP: If the corn plants are not yet stable enough to support the climbing beans, small sticks should be used temporarily as a climbing aid until the corn is strong enough.
fertilization
If the mixed cultures have all reached a height of 20 centimeters, they are strong enough to tolerate fertilization. Before that, the bed should be chopped and mulched. This makes weeds disappear and encourages the tendrils of the pumpkin to grow. This in turn allows it to absorb more carbon dioxide from the air, which is an ideal fertilizer for strong growth.
Charcoal Ash Fertilization
One of the most important factors in creating a milpa bed is fertilization with wood ash. It replaces the burning of original Indian beds. It provides lime and potash in the soil and makes the soil more fertile overall. Anyone who has already created the Aztec bed with Terra Preta, which is based on charcoal ash, can do without fertilization altogether.