We ate our first sweet corn toward the end of June. I wasn’t sure it was ripe but a coon got in the patch and confirmed to me that it was ready. As I got ready to plant early this spring I had doubts about growing my corn organically again this year. Everyone knows what a heavy nitrogen feeder corn is and I probably only had enough homemade compost made for my tomato holes and the new asparagus trench. I also did not get any horse manure this year so I considered adding some commercial fertilizer but eventually decided to just go pure organic another year and see what happened.
I had a good winter cover crop of rye grass and a lot of time on my hands in early spring. I sharpened a long handled shovel blade with a hand file. I skimmed off rows of rye grass sod, laid the sod to one side, and then dug a trench one-shovel deep laying the soil to the other side of the trench. To the bottom of the trench I added about an inch of old shredded leaves, a good sprinkling of wood ashes from my burn pile pit and chomped it all in with the shovel. In my mind this would form the sponge beneath the corn to prevent all the rain from draining straight through my sand soil. Next I skimmed off the ryegrass along with an inch of top soil from about one foot either side of the trench along with the sod I had laid beside the trench and inverted it all into the trench roots up, grass down. I hoed a furrow into the sod-filled trench and planted. Would that be enough fertility to raise sweet corn? I’d have to wait and see.
When the corn was about a foot tall, I hoed out the weeds and grasses and hilled it a bit. In half the rows I planted a row of bush beans about a foot out from the corn rows. The beans did well without extra fertilization and grew to thigh-high forming a good living shade mulch to keep down weeds. The corn ears and tassels were all well above the bush beans. When the beans were ready for their final harvest I just pulled out the entire plants and then picked the beans off while sitting in a lawn chair in the shade. I don’t like to be bent over a lot. The beans and the corn mature at about the same time; the corn is the heavy feeder and the beans the light feeders. We blanch excess beans and freeze them for later summer eating. Beans can tolerate some shade and the double leaf canopy of beans and corn keep weeds and grasses to a minimum; except for the initial hoeing before I planted the beans no more hoeing was required.
If we harvest corn ears down both sides of the bush bean rows and beans are planted between every alternate row then half the corn rows are available for planting either cantaloupe or butternut squash. The cantaloupe or squash or pumpkins grow undisturbed until the corn and beans are harvested and then spread to take over the entire field. I know butternut squash works well this way and I am trying the cantaloupe this year. So far the cantaloupe vines seem to be enjoying a little shade from the corn and not wilting like they do fully exposed to summer mid-day sun. The fruit may be slower developing and ripening. By the time I planted the cantaloupe seeds between every other corn row I had no compost for them and the rye grass cover crop had been scraped and given to feed the corn. The soil between the corn rows which I was planting to cantaloupe was relatively sterile and I would much prefer to put some manure under each plant but I just did not have it. Cantaloupe and squash benefit from some calcium/lime (as do corn and beans) and also have a strong Potassium need. Wood ash is strong in both of these so I went back to my burn pile where I had been burning branches and brush I had cleared during the winter and spread this ash between the rows. At present the cantaloupe appear to be doing well with only this fertilization.
This combination of bush green beans, sweet corn and squash or cantaloupe takes up about one third of my total garden space at present and I may eventually increase that up to half the garden. This combination seems to be able to be grown totally organically using the method I described and have either similar or complimentary fertilization and sunlight needs. After the cantaloupe (or squash) I can possibly get in a late crop of turnips after everything is harvested by early September. Right now it all looks like one big solid island of green growth with no visible aisles. An isle with no aisles.
Have you ever heard of Three Sisters? It is the Indian method of planting corn, beans and pumpkin together. You plant the corn first, wait until it is about a foot high, then plant beans to run up the corn, along with pumpkins to spread and shade it all from sun and eventual weeds. I understand any kind of gourd/squash will work. You need chickens for their manure. You will have to only allow them in the garden space when you want them there. Otherwise, they will dig up everything...lol. They do need to run free to eat grass part of the time.
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