You’ve heard the story of the Three Sisters, right? Or at least the concept of how the three sisters are planted: corn, beans and squash sowed together to help each other as they grow.
Here, on our farm, we have a slightly different version of the story. This is a modern-day Hot Mess set of sisters. We even threw 4th and 5th sisters in to really make sure things got ridiculous. And, they did.
Corn
Our corn is looking pretty thin. Mid-height and slender, we’re really not sure what to expect of it at this point. It doesn’t look nearly as hearty as the stalks in the fields. While I don’t expect it should, I also didn’t expect it to look quite this whimpy.
We’re absolutely certain the hellacious grass that is taking over is not helping the crop at all. Still – I would have like to have seen this experiment work out a bit better.
We are seeing tassels – which I’m told is an excellent sign. Despite the stalks bending and flopping in the wind, it does appear as though we may grow some sweet corn after all.
Beans
We alternated green beans and edamame between our rows of corn. In a perfect world, the vines would use the stalks as trellises. In our world – a hot mess world – the bean plants have remained low to the ground in a sea of grass. While we still appear to have beans growing on them, it’s not quite the glamorous partnership of nature we thought we were going to see happpening.
Squash
I can say that I’ve been super excited about the squash component of our south garden. The pumpkins are looking overwhelmingly lively. After spending a good chunk of a week cleaning the grass out of them – I’ve been over the moon with watching them thrive.
However, squash bugs have totally gotten to my zucchini and wrecked the pants. We’re in trouble here. I want to grow things organically – but keeping the pests away is tough work. Keeping the weeds away is tough work. And none of it is entirely intuitive to us quite yet.
Despite that, I’m in love with the beautiful squashes that are already started on the other vines.
Now, to figure out this bug sitch. Ugh.