knee high

When I was a girl I received a calendar as a gift. It was a calendar designed for children in the 10-12 year old range..lots of stickers, plenty of facts on most dates, room to commemorate all the important things happening. It probably set in place my love for organization..it had a most orderly flow to it, was colorful and I thought it was super cool. One of the summer time illustrations I remember was a fact about corn: "should be knee high by the 4th of July". We are growing the type of corn that grows like this..corn that is used for eating, corn that is for popping and corn that is for grinding into corn meal. right up next to the corn are planted squash or melons, and not far away are beans. And then sunflowers too..

It is unlikely that the honeybees will get in there and pollinate these. All are native to the United States, and developed using other techniques for fertilization. Corn is usually pollinated via the wind: the tassels and the corn silk get mixed up via summer breezes. The squash has a specific bee that moves their pollen around..early in the morning while the honeybee is still snoozing. And beans have a variety of little bees on them, bot usually honeybees.

Here is what is planted. We could hardly resist these old, non-hybrids..such great names..
Stowells Evergreen Corn
Blue Coco Bean
Lazy Wife Greasy Bean
Hopi Dye Sunflower


Silver Queen Corn (the one hybrid we grow..too delicious not to!)
Cherokee Cornfield Bean
Grey Tender Zucchini
Mammoth Russian Confectionary Sunflower

there are squash and melons in there too..

Banana Melon
Charentais Melon
noir de Carmes Melon
Honeydew Orangeflesh Melon
Queen Acorn Squash
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Northstar Watermelon
Small Sugar Pumpkin
Green Striped Cushaw Winter Squash
Delicata Zeppelin Winter Squash

so now we must be vigilant and pick the bugs off, so the plants can produce a harvest!

in the ground, with drip tape..