Today's superplant - the pumpkin

I've been thinking for a while about using the back garden to grow food. Recently, several people I know have also mentioned that they are thinking about doing some vegetable gardening or getting an allotment, so it may be that the idea is in the air (like some mental pollen looking for susceptible brains to pollinate!), perhaps impelled by how broke people seem to be feeling nowadays, what with the double-dip just round the corner...

ENN-EE-WAY I'm looking forward to what I should be planting next year. I want to maximise the utility I get from each type of plant (translation: I'm lazy) and I also like the idea of companion planting to increase productivity, decrease the amount of weeding necessary (see a theme developing here? actually it just appeals on the grounds of basic efficiency, honest) so I'm toying with some kind of variation on the Three Sisters technique.

Now the classical form of Three Sisters calls for growing maize, beans and squash. The maize grows alone until it reaches about 15 inches in height, then ytou plant beans and squash alternately between the maize plants. As the maize continues to grow, the beans grow up it (so, looks like you'll need a strong-stemmed variety of maize!) while the squash vine winds around below, providing ground cover and discouraging weeds. The beans also fix nitrogen, helping to assure fertility from year to year. (I suspect you could also plough in the maize stalks, and bits of the other plants, as a green fertilizer, but then you'd need to carefully rotate locations in order to avoid diseases overwintering in the soil. Maybe it would be best to just burn them or compost them.)

One problem is I'm not quite sure what I'd do with a lot of maize. I can't see myself producing ethanol in the garage, really, and I'm not sure if there is anywhere nearby that could grind them into meal or flour (though it might be worth looking, just in case there is). And would I really be up to putting the maze kernels through the nixtamalization that's necessary to extract all the goodness? — How easy is it to buy relatively small quantities of calcium hydroxide? Then again, maybe I could get by just grinding up some eggshells (mostly calcium carbonate) in a pestle and mortar and adding that to the simmering kernels? And anyway, nixtamalisation is only really necessary if you have maize as the major part of your diet, otherwise you'll get the niacin, lysine and tryptophan you need simply by having a varied diet.

So maize is probably still quite a good possibility, maybe even leaning towards a popcorn variety. Another possibility for the tall-plant role is the occasional sunflower. Beans are, of course, beans: there's any number of varieties that I could try. But what shall I choose for the squash?

Well I'm currently leaning towards the humble pumpkin. If you look at Leaflet No. 12 - 1986 - Pumpkin, you'll see that it's easily grown — the report says an old rubbish heap is ideal! — and that you can eat almost every part of the plant: the fruit (of course), the leaves, the flowers (use the petals, avoid the centres of the flowers), the growing tips of the vine itself, and the seeds.

The pumpkin's vitamin and mineral content is also high, with the leaves being stellar sources of vitamin A and, especially, C. You can eat them with fats (e.g. cream, oil, fatty meat) in order to promote uptake of the vitamin A into the body.