Schlatter Family Site

Beans and Corn

We plan to plant several rows of beans and corn.  We will plant Kentucky Wonder pole beans and two types of corn -- Silver Queen and Ambrosia. 

The Kentucky Wonder is a fairly common type of bean -- it produces a vine that climbs and you need to erect pole or tripods or something for the vine to climb, hence the name "pole bean."  We will plant beans as soon as the danger of frost is passed and will plant more beans every two weeks up until September.

Silver Queen is a sweet, white corn.  Ambrosia is also a sweet corn with mixed yellow and white kernels.

Laying out the corn and  bean plot

We will plant the beans and corn in the lawn, not in raised beds.  Here's the first step in planting the beans and corn.

Notice the two rows of orange stakes -- there's a row in the foreground and another row in the distance, just beyond the white sprayer.  These stakes mark where the rows for the corn and beans will go.  We want to be able to walk between the rows to tend and pick the beans and corn, so, we laid out these rows to allow walking space between the rows. 

We have a small power mower (that we have had since 1988) that cuts a swath 20 inches wide.  Our tiller tills a row 18 inches wide.  So -- we laid out the bean and corn garden with 18 inch rows spaced 2o inches apart.  This way, we till one row (18 inches wide), skip 20 inches, and till another 18-inch row.  The 20-inch spacing between rows will allow us to run the lawn mower between rows to keep the grass cut.

We laid out these stakes.  Then, I ran string along the sides of the 18-inch rows and sprayed Round-Up® vegetation killer on the grass that is in what will be an 18-inch wide row.  In 3-5 days the vegetation in the 18-inch wide row will be dead and the Round-Up® will be neutralized by the soil.  I will then run my tiller down the row of dead vegetation, cover that tilled row with compost, and use the tiller to mix the compost and soil, thereby producing five rows, each 18 inches wide and 25 feet long.  We will plant two rows of beans and three of corn with like types of corn planted together for pollination.

Preparing the corn and bean plot

We laid out the corn and bean plot on 25 March 2009.  By 29 March, the grass on the rows was dead from having been sprayed with Round-Up® vegetation killer.  Here's a photo.

The brown areas are dead grass where I sprayed vegetation killer.  The plan is to till these rows, cover them with compost, till the compost into the soil, then plant corn and beans in these rows.  The trailer parked at the end of the rows is our 5X8 utility trailer.  I had just returned from Glenn Lester's place where I purchased two cubic yards of compost for use in the corn and bean plot and elsewhere in the garden.

In this photo I have tilled the rows.  I first made two passes with the tiller set to till about 4 inches deep then made two passes with the tiller set at maximum depth, about 8 inches.

In this picture:

•  Removed the tarp covering the compost on the trailer and filled the wheelbarrow with compost.
•  Shoveled compost from the wheelbarrow onto the top of each tilled row.
•  Notice that I am almost finished -- still have to shovel compost onto the last half of the two left-hand rows.
•  The white object on the right is a bag of 10-10-10 slow release fertilizer.  I put about one pound of fertilizer on each row.

After covering each row with compost and fertilizer, I then ran the tiller over each row for two passes, thoroughly mixing the soil, compost, and fertilizer.

Now, we wait for the weather to get warm -- about two more weeks -- then we'll plant corn and beans in these rows. 

The only thing left to do is to put up posts in the rows where the beans will be planted.  We are going to set three 4X4 posts in each row of beans, run cables horizontally between the posts and tie strings vertically between the cables so the beans have the string net to climb on.  More pictures to follow.