Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Eblana on May 08, 2018, 10:44
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Hi all, this year I have the luxury of having a 10 mtr x 1 mtr Squash/Pumpkin bed into which I am putting two Pumpkins (one at either end) and various courgettes and squashes in-between. I am just wondering if there is anything else I can put in as a kind of catch crop as the bed is empty at the moment. Also is there anything other than beans that I could grow at the same time as the squashes to make better use of this space.
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I put a few sweetcorn plants in a small block here and there and plant the squash around them.
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Sweetcorn is ideal as long as you give yourself an access route to it to water and pick. Often end up with no way to get at it.
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Wasn't it the native Americans who used to plant sweetcorn, squash and climbing beans all together? The beans were trained up the sweetcorn plants, and the squash plants rambled around and kept all the roots cool.
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Yes, the '3 sisters' technique - much hotter summers over there though. ;)
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Wasn't it the native Americans who used to plant sweetcorn, squash and climbing beans all together? The beans were trained up the sweetcorn plants, and the squash plants rambled around and kept all the roots cool.
yes but they didn't harvest their crop till it was fully mature and harvested it all at once. We like ours young and sweet and we have to pick it before any wee beasty beats us too it.
I remember drinking a potent beverage while surrounded by drying corn cobs in Peru
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Sweetcorn is ideal as long as you give yourself an access route to it to water and pick. Often end up with no way to get at it.
As the bed is only 1 metre wide picking shouldn't be a problem :)
Hi all, this year I have the luxury of having a 10 mtr x 1 mtr Squash/Pumpkin bed
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For a catch crop cut and come again leaves are good, or if you wanted to improve the soul a weed suppressing green manure like phacelia to dig in in a few weeks time.
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Another catch crop is summer radishes, or even baby turnips, both of which would flourish in the rich soil of a squash bed and be ready to pull before the get swamped by the squash leaves
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Yes, the '3 sisters' technique - much hotter summers over there though. ;)
Yes & I think you’ll find they were beans for drying. Our sweetcorn doesn’t grow tall enough or fast enough for the beans to grow up