Three sisters gardening with figs is an idea that comes from the American Indians using fig trees instead of corn.The pumpkin plants at the base is a living mulch that provides weed suppression and moisture retention.The beans put nitrogen into the soil and feeds the pumpkins and fig tree.The fig tree provides the structure for the beans to climb.In the end I get pumpkins beans and figs all organically grown
 

Excellent idea!

Agreed. Going to do it.

That's an interesting idea. I partially buried some potted trees and planted sweet potatoes and bush beans around the pots. I had a similar though of the sweet potato vines and bean plants being a living mulch, and I would dig up the tubers and buried pots around the same time. I've always disliked growing pole beans because I'm too lazy to build a support for them. It never dawned on me to use the fig tree as the climbing structure.

Hi,
Climbing beans are probably not the best ones for that. Use the short growing ones and tie those to the tree, or they will compete for sun.
I plant all around my figtrees, be it tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, cabbage.
The theory is that you water the vegetables, and all excess water gets caught by the (fig)tree. The same for the fertilizer.
The problem comes when the canopy of the tree gets too strong. Then, pumpkins are what is left to plant, as they will benefit from running from sunny places to more shady places.
Just be careful as those climbing veggies can bend and even crack branches on the trees, especially in windy and rainy weathers .

This year I planted potatoes in the spaces around potted figs in my garden beds.  Same thought as you Johnny.  When I pull the figs this fall the beds will be very easy to dig the potatoes from.

"Just be careful as those climbing veggies can bend and even crack branches on the trees . . . ." This rules out using cucumbers, too.

I think crosnes (Stachys affinis) and American hogpeanuts (Amphicarpaea bracteata) may make another good polyculture choice in-between the planted fig pots.  You'll always miss some and they'll come back year after year for a bonus crop along with your figs.  The crosnes will form a groundcover and produce bunches of small "potatoes".  The hogpeanuts will climb the figs, but they will have no weight to harm branches, won't compete much for light (they grow in shade very well and have small leaves), will fix nitrogen and produce underground beans.  Hogpeanuts grow like crazy here in my forest and forest edge.  Both of them also move around a lot across my gardens...must be mice, chipmunks or something moving the beans and tubers around.

excellent idea  thanks for sharing

Both the pumpkin and the beans will want to climb and shade the fig.  It will take constant work to combat this.  They will compete for soil nutrients and fight to produce the microbiological environment they prefer.  Annual veggies prefer bacterial dominant soil while trees prefer a fungally dominated soil.  If you plant an underground crop you'll disturb the fig roots to harvest it.

This is not something I'd do but best of luck if you try it.

I'm in agreement with everything you said Bob.  That's why I think the perennial creatures I mentioned should work well and provide a modest bonus crop when you disturb the soil by pulling out the potted figs.  I'm doing the figs in 5 gallon buckets with 32 1" holes on the sides (none on bottom) method and when I pull them all up the soil around them is easy to push around to find root crops in.

Not sure how the potatoes will work out as it's my first year trying those between the pots.  Definitely need to use fig trees that have some height to them...say 4' or more so that they are nicely above the potato plants.  I had a few shorter young figs in there and decide to hack the potatoes back around them as they were starting to challenge the figs...figs always get first priority!