intercropping sweetcorn and beans??

Has anybody inter planted sweetcorn with dwarf french beans?

Wondering if this would work well or will they be in too much competition?!

I look at it this way - in the last few summers my beloved sweet corn has had enough to contend with given the weather, so additional competition for light and nutrients from any other plants doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Better summer, further South, maybe, but even then I'd stil draw the line at two sisters (sweet corn and courgettes or squashes) rather than all three.

The problem will be in getting access to pick the beans when they are ready, so I do not think that it is worth the effort. This is really a "two sisters" system, but the North American Indians were growing the beans for storage of the beans and could leave them till the end of the season.

I have used squashes for underplanting saves watering keeping the soil damp and cuts down on the weeds.
Works well for me

As said previously, I like to give corn the best I can in an all too short season. This Indians probably didn't have the short season problem and probably didn't grow short little F1 hybrids. 
Planting squashes and pumpkins and courgettes close by and letting them trail around the corn is however an excellent use of space IMO.

Totty

I agree with angeladavis. I tried the three sisters approach on a number of years and always found the climbing beans pulled the sweetcorn stalks over and prevented them from wind pollinating properly and dwarf beans just took nutrients from the bed that the sweetcorn could have had.

I did have success with planting a butternut squash at each end of the sweetcorn bed and training the vines through the bed toward each other, making sure the fruits are toward the bed edges so they catch the sun for ripening. The vines shade the sweetcorn so they don't need so much watering as devon said.

I used to think that growing beans with sweetcorn helped to feed the sweetcorn with extra nitrogen but sadly this has been found to be a gardener's myth.

"squashes always seem to produce all their fruit at the edge of the sweetcorn where they ripen well. Hardly ever produce fruit in the middle right under the shade. Have others found the same?"

I have found they do produce fruits but they never grow very big, whereas the ones that are outside the bed or are trained in that direction, swell in the sunshine.

I always pick off the fruits I know are not going to come to much, to give the main ones more energy to max out. I also bury a lareg plantpot by the squash plant so I can pour in some nettle and comfrey tea regularly.

I tried the '3 sisters' idea in 2007 - the principle is good - the squashes would have helped to prevent the soil from drying out and compacting around the corn...


...had they have actually grown!! 

The beans and corn did ok - not a huge bean harvest though