Corn Growing with Pumpkins and Squash
I’ve been reading and thinking about plants that would grow well together and read somewhere about growing pumpkins/squash around the base of sweet corn. Apparently they go well together. The ground covering and shallow roots of the squash working well with the deep roots and straight up and tall corn. It should help, not only in the use of space, but the pumpkins/squash will reduce the weeds with their shade, protect the sweet corn’s roots from the sun, the soil from drying out and protect the corn from strong winds, acting as a wind break. Plus I think its going to look really good. A carpet of green leaves with spikes of corn sticking out. I’ve read about this idea, and its a very old idea, maybe even native American, but never found a report and certainly not a photo of anyone doing it. This is a proper experiment, to see if both the corn and the pumpkin/squash grows well and whether it causes any other unthought of problems or benefits. The corn will have to be spaced well for the pumpkin/squash plants to grow and the pumpkin/squash fruit when they appear . It also may be hard to get in and pick the corn if we’re not careful, but I think this should work really well. The biggest problem I have theorised with my corn growing so far has been from wind damage, I think this will make a big difference to that. Lets see what happens!
A thought I keep having is about how much pumpkins and squash cross pollinate, with each other and amongst themselves. I really don’t know if it will affect the fruit of the year of growing, or just the seeds if I were to collect them. Its something I need to read more about.
Link to Squash and Pumpkin and Sweetcorn posts
