The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 24 – Agricultural Arithmetics

I have three “Tree Sisters” patches, with 10, 15, and 25 squares. In all the patches, I planted or I am planning to plant 2 beans in each corner, then either 2 corn in each square or 4 corn in every even square, and either 1 pumpkin in each square or 1 in every odd square.

So I crunched some numbers to see how much of the full capacity of these areas I am using concerning each plant:

~80% for the beans
~90% for pumpkins
~30% for corn

So overall, I am using only half the area that I would need if I were growing each of the crops separately at optimal spacing. Which is one of the points of using the companion-plant system.

I do not know whether this ratio is good, bad, or ugly. To be completely honest, I did not look it up, and I am playing it by the ear. I planted the beans as a main crop because I have marginal soil, and I know beans thrive on it and will improve it. Then I planted only as much corn as I had receptacles for. And I might plant even more pumpkins than I initially planned because one of the seed suppliers had almost a miraculous germination rate and I loath to toss a viable plant.

That last point is still not entirely decided. I already planted 10 marrow squashes, and so far they have survived and started to grow. Today I also planted the first 3 Hokkaido because they had three true leaves and thus should, hopefully, be sturdy enough to survive slugs (I will add slug pellets around them anyway). The butternut squashes still have a huge question mark over them, but if they survive, I might have to establish a solitary patch for some of them. I do have the place,  although I do not know if I will have the strength.

I will probably have to add some liquid fertilizer to the irrigation water due to the marginal nature of my soil. The improving effect of beans will only show up in the subsequent years. I do not know if the plants will grow to their full capacity or if the capacity of each species is going to be diminished. Unless it is reduced by more than half, the patches should produce more than separated ones would.

Based on past experience, if grown separately, I should get around 70g of beans, 50 g of corn, and 5000 g of pumpkin on average from one plant. So if all plants grow well, I might be looking at about 30 kg of beans, 5 kg of sweet corn, and 150 kg of pumpkins. I will only believe those numbers when I see them, and out of all of these, I am most inclined to believe the first and the last one. Of all these, it is usually the corn that performs the poorest.

I did try corn as a companion plant to potatoes about five years ago. I did not write about it, but it was a success – the potatoes grew at 100% capacity, and thus all the corn was extra, albeit a small amount. Shame that it is so much more work to grow everything here. I could get a lot more use out of my garden if I could just toss seeds in the ground and let them grow. It is one of many downsides of living in a semi-mountainous area. Sigh.

Now I’m going outside again.

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 23 – Garden Gym

The second heap of dry leaves did heat up to 50°C. Thus, I now know for sure that inoculating old grass and leaves with calcium cyanamide does help the decomposition process. And since I had to mow the grass (my garden was slowly becoming unwalkable), I mixed it with this old one again.

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Mowing the grass all around my garden was a whole day’s work, mixing it in alternating layers with the old grass did add some effort, but not that much. In the evening, I had a nice fresh green heap in the garden. That did not last long – the very next morning (today), the heap was already browning, and when I measured the temperature all around it, I got 55-60°C everywhere. It was perceptibly warm to the touch on the surface.

As an experiment with this second heap, I added no additional water whatsoever. For now, it relies purely on rain and the water from the fresh grass and decomposition. We shall see how that goes. I will again monitor the temperature daily, and I will only turn it, when it starts to cool off.

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I prepared a second three sisters patch, and I also reinforced the first one with poles connecting the tips of the outer rows. The tips were already connected with twine, but those only worked as reinforcements in tension. Connecting the tips of at least the outer rows with poles reinforced the whole structure significantly. Once the beans get established and get a few turns around the base of each pole, the whole structure should be able to withstand significant winds, hopefully. I did this already a few times (for beans only) and it worked.

Whilst doing this, the curse of my bloodline struck.

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I got distracted by an arriving package, and I put down the shears for cutting twine somewhere near the working area. I never found them again. My mother came by, and she was looking for them all over the place, too. And although she is very good at this, she did not find them either. Two days later, when mowing the grass, I found the plastic handles in the lawn-mower basket, but I never found the metal parts. Thus, I still do not know where and how exactly I actually lost them. It was definitely somewhere in the places where we looked, repeatedly.

I also planted all of my corn, which also took two days. Initially, I wanted to plant 8 beans, 2 corn, and 1 pumpkin in each square. I changed that, and I am planting either 8 beans and 4 corn or 8 beans and 1 pumpkin per square, alternating. For the 5×5 patch, I have 12 squares with corn, and 13 squares are so far empty, waiting until the Hokkaido pumpkins are big enough to survive slugs. For the new 5×3 patch, I planted 7 squares with corn, and the remaining 8 will get butternut pumpkins, possibly without beans, because of their poor germination rate. I am contemplating reinforcing the poles for these 8 squares so I may perhaps lead the butternut pumpkins up instead of leaving them grow along the ground.

I also put the beans outside in the shade to harden off for a few days before planting them in full sun.

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I was pretty knackered after all that work, so today, I decided to chill out a bit. I went to weed the onion patches, this time removing as much weed as possible. I managed to weed slightly over half of the patches before it started to rain, and I had to go inside.

There is still a lot of work to do. I reckon that once the beans are hardened off and can be planted, it will take a few days too, due to the sheer number of them (over 120 pots). After that, the pumpkins should go reasonably quickly.

And when the pumpkins are in the ground, I will, hopefully, have time again to do something else. It usually is like this in the garden – a lot of work in the spring, a lot of work in the late summer/fall, and relatively little in between.