Old ways: Cherokee corn-beans-squash

Hi, gardeners!

I planted corn-beans-squash Cherokee-style last year, with pretty good but
mixed success;
and want to try it again this year with even better success.

I have raised beds, 4 ft wide by 12 ft. long.  At each end of the bed, and
in
the middle, I dug a hole about 2 ft.deep and 2 feet across, and filled it
with various kinds of uncomposted organic garbage, including lint, coffee
grounds, kitchen garbage:  like a "fresh" compost pile, mixed also with
grass clippings and old, "finished" compost.

The dirt that I'd dug out to make these holes, I put on top, creating
flat-topped mounds of topsoil about 2 ft across and 2 ft high.  So that made
3 mounds per bed:  near end, middle, far end.

In the beds between the mounds, I put layers of newspapers and then 2 ft of
mulch to hopefully suppress the weeds all season.  So at this point, the
mounds and the mulch were again level (at equal height, if you can
visualize that.)

I put a big ol' empty coffee can on top of each mound, set a couple of
inches into the dirt so they wouldn't tip over, with a few holes in the
bottom of each for water to drain through.  These served well to enable me
to water the mounds after everything started to grow.   Then I planted 6
kernels of a good sweet dwarf corn, Butterfruit,  about 5 inches equidistant
from each other in a circle all around the can on top of each mound.

After the corn sprouted and was about 5 inches high, I planted scarlet
runner beans or (in some cases) lima beans about 3  or 4 per mound, each one
about 2 inches or so from the sprouted corn.

After these had sprouted well, I planted 1 squash per mound.

Notice that the in-between "deep mulch" areas were left completely
unplanted.

Well, everything came up fine, and started getting big and jungly rather
fast, beans growing up corn, and squash spreading out to cover the "deep
mulch" parts of the bed.  In fact, the corn did splendidly: though it was
supposed to be a 4-foot dwarf type with just 1 ear per plant, it grew up 5
or 6 feet with 3 or 4 ears per plant, very sweet and nice.  Man, I was proud
of it.

Here's where the problem came.  At one point in the summer, it rained
heavily and the mounds got saturated.  Then the corn fell over! Each fell
outward, radially.

I didn't know what to do, so I just picked all the corn (although some of it
was not quite mature) and ended up trampling a lot of the beans and squash
plants.  The corn was absolutely delicious, but overall, this led to
disappointing losses.

What I SHOULD have done, I realize now, is this:  I should have made my corn
more stable by tying the  stalks together --- not tight, but just enough so
they couldn't fall outwards like spokes on a wheel.  I should also not have
watered quite so much, since the mounds were already quite moist when t e
rain came, and of course the mulch around everything kept things moist and
loose.

Also:  if the wind does knock your corn plants down, all you need to do is
set them back up again,and prop or firm them in with dirt and they'll keep
on growing.   But I didn't know that.

We live and learn.

More Butterfruit this year!

Julianne
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