I tried planting pole beans with my corn last year and it did not turn out well at all. The beans broke off a lot of the corn leaves as it grew up the corn. The beans grew a lot faster than the corn...and my corn height was significantly stunted. I am going to try bush beans around the corn this year and see what happens...I started my corn 2 weeks ago and they are about 6 inches tall. I am going to plant bush beans tomorrow...Note...i am planting beans that I will use for dry beans...kidney beans and great northern. THis way i don't have to mess around inside the corn bed....the corn should be done before the dry pods need to be taken off the plant. Here is a link that might be useful: How my garden grows!

Well I did mean that the pole beans are the more aggressive climbers. and would finish first in a race to the top of your poles. Curt~

Actually, the Native Americans had quite large fields. four or five acres per family, and the area around Iroqouis villages with several hundred families looked like any other pre industrial farmland. The farmscape would have been awesome before the Spanish brought smallpox and wiped out the huge corn based native population in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. My corn (Painted Mountain) got blown down in its little protected hole in the trees the other day. The Native American's did plant rather densely with 6-9 plants a few inches apart in each hill, and then banked up soil around the stems before they left town for the summer hunt. That may have helped bolster the plants against the wind. http://www.archive.org/details/agriculturehidatsa00waherich http://www.archive.org/details/cornamongindians00williala http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7057602M/The_use_of_maize_by_Wisconsin_Indians http://www.archive.org/details/iroquoisusesofma00parkrich

Shading roots as a living mulch is one benefit of growing squash with beans and corn. The other benefit is that raccoons don't like the feel of squash leaves, so it deters them. You might do just as well to plant squash around the perimeter. The most important thing to consider in the planning stage is the mature size of the corn plants versus the mature size of the pole bean plants. A lot of sweet corns are very short compared to the field corns that were traditional (sweet corn is relatively new). Pole beans can often get to be too big and overwhelm 6' to 8' corn plants, dragging them to the ground. For that matter, squash can climb as well... What I do is plant either melons or bush squash with sweet corn, and either bush or runner beans. The sizes fit better, and you still get the benefit of nitrogen from beans and shade from cucurbit leaves. Always wait until the corn is at least a foot tall before planting the other two sisters with it.