One Lonely Sister - Disheartened by the Sweetcorn

I have written about the Three Sisters system of growing before.
For those who missed it, here's a quick resume.
Grow sweetcorn, squashes and climbing beans together. They all have different needs for light and nutrients and all help each other. It is a system used by Native American Indians.

Of course, it is very trendy, especially when you select Cherokee Trail of Tears beans to grow, for this makes it sound even more authentic. While Cherokees are, reportedly, a good bean to grow, so are many other French beans. I prefer Cobra, which sounds pretty authentic in a desert context, though it of course inhabits the other India!

But this system of companion growing is designed to use the same land year after year in a completely different climate and soil type to what we experience in Britain. I have tried it and it does not work for me. The beans never do well, or if you plant them too much earlier than the corn then the corn never makes it. So I have been sticking to Two Sisters growing. Small groups of corn with pumpkins and squashes rambling in between. It has worked well, except that in cooler years, or if the sweetcorn gets off to a slow start, the cobs are not ripe before the wheat field next door is harvested.

The result is disheartening to say the least. I'm not sure if it's the rats or the field mice (I suspect a bit of both, and maybe a bit of rabbit thrown in), but they devastate the crop before it is ripe enough to harvest. They even have the nerve to chew through the husk material to see if the corn is ripe. If not, they leave it till later, irrevocably damaged.

Looking on the bright side, at least we've enough sweetcorn in the freezer from last year that we won't run out. Even if we do, we've plenty more vegetables to choose from. That's the nature of growing your own. Every year some things go mad while others disappoint. Just look at my courgette failure this year for a good example.

On the other bright side, Rambo is enjoying the corn leaves and the stem and roots will go back into the soil and give it body.

And on the third bright side, the squashes seem to be coming good and nothing seems to eat them.

But next year the already depleted Two Sisters will be going down to One Lonely Sister. I am going to experiment with a new variety of sweetcorn, allegedly a supersweet, non-hybrid variety which ripens early. But to be on the safe side, I shall again be growing some in the polytunnel and the rest in my mixed vegetable beds outside, away from the field and in the more protected environs of the main veg plot.

Pumpkin Bakery

A pumpkin goes a long way... and I've still got several in storage.
Hopefully they'll last a while, but every now and then one needs using up.

I don't understand why, but when harvesting they need a good piece of stalk left on. The other day I accidentally knocked the top off a butternut and, within a couple of days, it began to go.

Pumpkin soup is scrummy, warm and delicious. I usually go for a spiced up recipe. Despite each pumpkin leading to gallons of soup, it still seems to disappear quite quickly. But pumpkin has a strange sweetness to it too. This is most exploited in America in the form of pumpkin pie - something I've not yet tried cooking. The condensed milk always sounds just a bit too sickly!

Pumpkin makes a good bread too, (try this recipe for orangey pumpkin bread - it actually uses a whole orange blitzed up and tastes gorgeous - though mine came out more like a cake than a moist bread) but here I want to tell you about pumpkin cake. I actually made it about ten days ago and it's all gone now, but I've completely forgotten where the recipe came from - which is absolutely no use to you! However, recipes are widely available and they are much of a muchness. All I can say is to give one of them a go. I did and I wasn't disappointed.

Dry ingredients at the ready.

This cake mix did well to make it through to the baking stage!
I certainly enjoyed licking the bowl.

Voila!

A couple of hints
1. This recipe called for pumpkin puree (canned) but I just cooked up some pumpkin and ran it through the food processor. Inexplicably, though, I got less weight of puree out than the pumpkin that I put in. Had I not run out of pumpkin because of this, a pumpkin pie may actually have materialised too.
2. Read the reviews after the recipes - I searched for a frosted icing recipe and the one I settled on came out way too runny and was almost unsaveable. The first review told me this, had I looked at it!

 

Pumpkin Physics

Imagine an airbag, just sitting all its life waiting for its moment.

Then, one day, BANG. It breaks out, expands to fill all available space.

Well, pumpkins live by the same principles. The moment a seed gets the chance it grows and grows and grows. But that's not what amazes me. It's what follows.

One of my pumpkins just sitting looking innocuous

You pick your precious pumpkin, sharpen your knives and slice it into ginormous chunks.
From that moment on, pumpkin physics takes over. It contradicts all the physics you may have learned at school. For, the second its skin is broken, the pumpkin, like the airbag, starts expanding to fill all available space.

So what to do with these mountains of pumpkin. Well, I filled my largest stock pot in preparation for making a spicy pumpkin soup - so simple to make. Just fry off some onions and garlic, throw in some spices and as much chilli as you like. Add some stock and the pumpkin.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup on the way

Then just cook it until soft and blitz.

 

But I still had plenty of pumpkin left, enough to fill two more large saucepans and still have chunks of pumpkin spilling out onto the worktop.

 

Now, as it happens, I also had a bowl of old pears waiting to go out. So my mind started to create. I wonder. Would pear and pumpkin go together? I'll throw in a few spices and some ginger... yes, ginger, that'll go with both and tie the whole dish together.

A perfect match?



My concoction simmering away

I'd like to say that I created a stunning new dish. Yes. I'd like to say that. But the fact is that it just tasted a bit weird. Somewhere between a soup and a pudding! I tried to save it in the soup direction by adding stock, some turmeric, pepper. In fact, anything soupy.

Maybe I should have tried to take it the other way and create a dessert out of it.

Anyway, I've learned something at least. And I've not lost a lot. It all went on the compost heap, which is where the pears would have ended up whatever.

As for all that pumpkin skin and innards, the compost heap and chickens were very happy indeed. And apparently pumpkin seeds are supposed to be good for purging the chickens' digestive systems.

Nothing goes to waste here.

 

Three Sisters resurrected

Last year I attempted to cultivate The Three Sisters.

That's the system where you grow sweetcorn in small clumps, interspersed with squashes and pumpkins. Then you add the third "sister" - climbing beans, whose sole purpose is to feed the slugs and divert them away from the other crops... or so it seemed.

Well, that was last year.
As it was, the sweetcorn, squashes, courgettes and pumpkins did very well given copious amounts of rain.

This year is a very different year. So last week the three sisters were resurrected.

The sweetcorn is growing well now.
Time to sow the French beans.

I doubt the original growers of Three Sisters
surrounded their crops with electric fence
to protect it against rabbits.

Young sweetcorn plants, back on 27th May


The sweetcorn has been planted for well over a fortnight now. It always takes a knock back when it first goes into the ground outside and the weakest specimens don't make it.
After a tricky germination, where several complete trays just rotted away as they failed to spring into life in the cool conditions, I didn't really have any to spare. As it is a high proportion of plants have made it through and have begun to grow more strongly.

Various types of courgette, squash and pumpkin have now been transplanted out between them.

I decided to invest time erecting the electric rabbit fence around my lovingly nurtured plants. There is nothing as soul-destroying as the disappointment of finding your freshly planted crops nibbled or, worse still, uprooted and laying wilted on the surface of the soil.

And so to the third sister. While the cucurbits spread and shade the surface of the soil, the beans climb up the sweetcorn stalks, in the process capturing nitrogen and enriching the soil for next year.
I had some beans already sown, but they are about three times as tall as the corn and reaching rapidly for the skies. So I decided instead to sow fresh beans at the bases of the sweetcorn. I have plumped for French bean Blue Lake, a stringless variety which has performed well in our soil in the past.

And in honour of the Native American origins of the Three Sisters planting system, I have planted some wigwams of runner beans alongside!

But in all seriousness there are some very valid reasons for growing these crops in combination. Get the timing right and the plants aid each others' growth. They provide a good nutritional balance too.
There's some good information on this website:

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

One very useful hint I picked up from this site, so indirectly from the Native American Indians, is to use nature to time sowing and planting.
For early spring in the books is different across the whole country and from year to year. If you sowed seeds strictly by date this year, as I found out to my cost with the sweetcorn, they just sat in the cold conditions not realising it was time to sprout into life.
But if you sowed when, for instance, the cow parsley came into flower or the sowthistles started to grow, then nature would be your calendar...

Not that nature always gets it right.

Pumpkin Carnage

These pumpkins obviously know what's coming.

 

Wednesday 7th November 2012

This is my Halloween equivalent of Christmas Tree recycling. Any unwanted, scary carved pumpkins gratefully received.
Considering that I recently almost sliced off a chunk of my finger trying to get into one of these, Daisy's powerful jaws chomp into them with astonishing ease.



No piglets were harmed or scared
during the filming of this horror movie!

Pumpkins flee for their lives.

Pumpkins for Halloween



Wednesday 31st October 2012
Is that a pumpkin appearing in the sky?



Stuffed pumpkins - delicious!



Pumpkin and Bacon Soup bubbling away in the cauldron!

 

Well, it just wouldn't be right not to eat pumpkins on Halloween would it?

The only nightmare today though was the howling, and surprisingly cold, south-westerly wind.



And if anybody comes by trick-or-treating I'll eat one of those Hundredweight pumpkins! It's a cold, dark night out there and we're a long way from any reasonably sized habitation.

 

So, outdoor jobs for the day were limited. The main one, which I accomplished on my own and with astounding efficiency, was moving Daisy up to the stable blocks where she can hopefully give birth to her next litter in about a week's time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is familiar with the route now and just followed me all the way into the stables, where she settled in very quickly. It is a bit boring for her in there, but it is the safest place for a gang of newborn piglets.

 

 

 

The other job for the day was somewhat more traumatic, for I needed a haircut. In fact, I have needed a haircut for quite some time now, but I do like the wild Crusty The Clown look! Anyway, today I was well and truly shorn!

SCARY hey!

Pumpkins galore!

Saturday 20th October 2012
Just before sunrise

Just after sunrise!
Same view.

Sunset.

Under today's ever changing sky, I collected in the last of the pumpkins. The pigs got a couple too, those which had imperfections (rotting away) and would not store. They were very appreciative.



Most people have machines for this type of work...or at least a donkey!
I love it really. Keeps me fighting fit.
These are Pumpkin Hundredweight.

These pumpkins are going into the polytunnel to dry off and ripen a little more before they go into a cool, dark, dry place (the garage) for storage.
We'd better get used to pumpkins with our pork! Though various strains of pumpkin soup, pumpkin jam, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cake are also in our plans for winter survival.

The smaller pumpkins have done rather well too. Baked and stuffed they make an attractive and delicious talking point when people come over. We've been giving a few away to our pork customers. One couple, when presented with a pumpkin from the basket on the kitchen table, were greatly surpised that it was real. They thought they were plastic and merely for decoration!! It was one of Sue's prize-winning pumpkins though.




Jack-Be-Little, Potimarron, Turk's Turban, F1 Sugar Mixed
+ a couple of courgettes, the last of the year.



A Pumpkin is not just for Halloween.

Monday 15th October 2012

My heart lifted the other day when one of my pupils, on the subject of pumpkins, started talking about pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie. Could it be that the British public are finally realising that you can actually eat pumpkins as well as carve them into ghoulish faces?

Unfortunately, when I recanted this tale to Sue, she pointed out that the child's reaction had probably come straight from Homer Simpson!

The sweetcorn which towered over my various squashes, courgettes and pumpkins is now long picked, but I have been leaving the pumpkins etc to soak up every last gram of British sunshine. Today I decided to brave entering the jungle of gigantic leaves and meandering stems, with the intention of removing said leaves so that the crop could have a last few days in the open, still attached to its stems just in case it could wheedle out any extra goodness from the roots.

As seems to always happen, it proved to be a bigger job than I was expecting. It was like untangling spaghetti and a fair few times I cut through the wrong stem - hence the pile of pumpkins and squashes on the goat barrow ready to spend a few days ripening in the polytunnel.

By the end, I was fairly impressed with my crop, especially considering that the same patch has already yielded a considerable quantity of courgettes.

I was also left with about 8 barow loads of greenery, which the pigs turn their noses up at, although they did tuck into all the old corn stems with zeal. So the compost heaps got some good roughage added.

By this evening, Sue was already boiling up a vat full of spiced pumpkin and apple jam. It smelt absolutely delicious, very Christmassy.