Last Summer I was going down Pleasant St. and saw a yard with 2 or 3 rows of corn growing! I have to say that this was really surprising to me and led to research and planning…because who doesn’t love the taste of corn fresh out of the garden?

Our research led to the corn, sunflower, squash and bean bed and it is working! The sunflowers are opening and are huge, the Zucchini, Butternut, and Pumpkin all flowering like crazy and starting to produce fruit, and oh the beans…they are winding up around the stalks of the Sunflowers and Corn and every leaf we turn over has small flowers and beans under it! They are a small red Mexican bean that can be dried or canned. I would like to try canning them, just because I haven’t done that yet.

beans growing up the sunflower

bean

Yesterday, we picked the corn and froze a couple of servings and canned the rest. Quite an amazing process to see. This year is an experiment to see what we can grow – and next year I will definitely include corn in the plan for the garden. Changing a couple of things would work better. The Sunflowers are ridiculously large and should be in the back row of the bed, with the Corn in the front so it is not shaded by them. The squash and beans are working perfectly so no change is needed for them.

Where it all began…

Today =)

Corn! Each plant grew about 2 ears of corn, some of the plants were stunted by the Sunflowers

Corn! We were able to can 5 pints of corn and froze a couple of servings.

This is the summer of learning how to do all of this, and the vision of this corn (along with potatoes, beans, carrots, etc.) in a stew in the middle of Winter fills my heart with something that only going through this whole process can produce. Reading has been a great tool for learning the theory of how things work – but actually doing it, even on a small scale like we have, has given us experience that is invaluable.

First Zucchini starting to grow

First Pumpkin