Corn

Today I weeded out my old raised bed. I'm impressed to see that the soil is actually starting to look fairly decent. DH & I were discussing digging out all the old soil and replacing it with Beaty's landscape mix next year, but it looks like I may not have to really do that. I'm so glad too, that would be a lot of work.

Anyway, I divided the bed in fourths and dumped a bag of composted manure in each fourth to make a mound to plant my three sisters properly. Well, I'm not sure if manure is too strong to plant in, so that's not very proper, but we'll see. I made a little well at the top of the mounds for the corn. I read that you should plant corn that way to retain more water, since corn needs a lot. I planted 4 seeds of Early Sunglow in one mound and 4 of Golden Cross Bantam T-51 (a later variety) in another. Once they germinate, I will succession plant in the other two mounds.

Unfortunately, this bed is smaller, so I won't get much corn this year. I probably could have done 6 mounds instead of 4. I just realized I fit in 8 in the other raised bed. Oh well. I'm actually kind of wondering if I really should do three sisters at all. In that plan, the corn is planted so far away from each other to allow room for the beans & squash, so I don't really get a lot of corn. I'm wondering if I would get a better yield of all three just doing a regular rotation plan & doing bush beans instead of pole. It's something I definitely want to calculate as I plan for next year.

I also found a little surprise in my new lasagna bed. Apparently, all the seeds from last year's fall pumpkin decided to germinate out of my compost. The one end was covered with pumpkin plants! I pulled them all up and put them on the compost pile. And if you're wondering, there are about 3 plants growing there too. It will be interesting to see if we inadvertently grow pumpkins this year.