Just let them go, Yes they will slow down in cool weather, but unless you have a killing frost all it does is extend your DTM.

strawberry - the 3 sisters garden fad is often discussed here and generally does not work. The search will pull up previous discussions about it if you want to read them. It appeals to new gardeners and can teach you some valuable lessons about what NOT to do in the future if you want to try it but most experienced gardeners will tell you it is a waste of time and energy and results in very poor production. It worked for the Amerindians because they were gardening very differently than the average home gardener does. They used large open fields. And they used very different varieties - field corn left to dry on the stalk before harvest, dried beans left to dry on the vine, and winter squash left to mature on the vines until late fall. That isn't what you will be using and what you'll end up with is broken or falling over corn stalks, a tangled mess of a garden that is almost impossible to pick in, and poor production of both the corn and the beans because they have different nutrient needs. Try it if you wish but you'll do much better if you plant your corn and pole beans normally - separate locations. Dave

The link below is an interesting video sent to me by rtl850nomore Thanks for the link mangled, I wanted to read the article but all I could find was the blogs. Was there an article that spurred the conversations? Thanks for your comments Grant, I'll post back as the garden begins to show signs of life. Mangledmind, what kind of winter squash are you planting? Here is a link that might be useful: Hopi Corn

Suzie, I plant Early Sunglow sweet corn every year for my early corn, normally planting the seed as soon as possible after the danger of frost has passed. Because it has such a short DTM, it usually produces a harvest by Memorial Day weekend. Both the plants and ears are small, but then most early corn varieties do produce small ears. I buy the seed right off the rack some years, but at the farm stores where I find it, it often sells out pretty early. I'm guessing that is because it is used by a lot of people fort their early corn since it can withstand late freezes and frosts to some degree.. One huge advantage of early corn is that it often matures ears even before the corn earworms and European corn borers arrive. I think I have seen Early Sunglow on the seed racks at either Lowe's, Home Depot or Wal-Mart this year, but not lately. If you have to order it, you normally can find it online at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. The reason corn is planted in blocks is that it is wind pollinated and the pollen spreads around best when corn is planted in blocks of at least four rows. When you grow corn in one long row, pollination often is poor and when you harvest the ears, they may or may not have lots of kernels. Instead of planting one long row along the edge of a garden, just plant 4 shorter rows all together in a block. Be advised that if you have raccoons around, they love, love, love corn. In our earlier years here, I normally could get Early Sunglow to maturity before the raccoons even figured out I was growing corn. In more recent years, that has not been the case. One problem with the coons is that they will pick an ear, take a few bites of it and then discard it and eat part of another ear and apparently they do that all night long. It is not unusual for them to destroy dozens of ears in one night. Even worse, they won't wait for it to ripen, often pulling the ears 5-7 days before they'd be ready for a human being to harvest them, so you have a very slim chance of beating them to the corn. Most people who live near me in an admittedly rural area with high levels of wildlife have either given up planting corn altogther, or surround it with an electric fence to keep the raccoons out. I grow mine in a corn cage....a fenced garden just for the corn that has a poultry netting 'roof' to keep the raccoons out. This year in one of the new gardens I am going to plant corn without a corn cage or an electric fence. I am going to surround it with a double row of milk thistle plants in the hope that their big prickly leaves will keep the coons out of the corn. There are few things better than fresh corn on the cob. I like to harvest it and take it right inside and cook it and eat it right then. Since I plant a lot, some of it always does end up in the freezer. And, now that I have gotten better at fighting the raccoons, less and less of it ends up in their tummies. One of our neighbor's relatives had a corn patch that was a quarter mile long (I don't know how wide) and raccoons still got every ear. Another neighbor's brother trapped and shot raccoons every single night...18 raccoons in 18 nights....in order to protect his corn and save his harvest and he still got zero ears. Corn is very popular with squirrels and other wildlife too, so be aware of that. Often you won't have an issue the first year, but in subsequent years, as they discover what you're growing, you'll have to fight them for every single bit of it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Early Sunglow's Description at SESE