The Best Corn & Bean Planter Combinations

Midget Corn and Beans

• Home gardens in urban areas are challenged by lack of space, blocked light and possible air pollution. But the plants themselves clean the atmosphere around them and a careful container gardener can produce a crop of tasty nutritious veggies---just fewer of them and smaller varieties than a field or farm can deliver. Cornell University Suffolk Extension recommends that urban gardeners, limited to containers, try a few varieties bred for close quarters. Smaller sweet corn cultivars like Golden Midget, White Midget, and Midget Hybrid will thrive in garbage cans, bushel baskets, and galvanized tubs or wood half-barrels, as long as they get at least six hours of full sun daily and have good drainage. Mix in some green beans, cultivated to resist pests and adapt to a terrace or courtyard container. Green Pole, Kentucky Blue, Blue Lake, Charon, Jade and Roma II --- a flat Italian bean --- will climb the corn plant or a small trellis in the pot.

Narrow Depths and Widths

• Ohio State University Extension points out that many problems with container-grown vegetables stem from restricted roots. Space-saving corn the university lists are Kandy Korn, F-M Cross, Precocious and Golden Bantam corns, which will grow in a 21-inch-wide, 8-inch-deep container. Tuck in among them beans that will grow in narrower containers but like an 8- to 10-inch depth, like Contender, Provider, Bush Romano, Stringless, Tender Crop, Bush Blue Lake, and a number of lima beans. Both the corn plants and the beans will be happier thinly planted and at a greater depth. One trick for keeping container plants erect is to sink sturdy stakes in the ground around the container and fasten the stalks to them when the plants threaten to overwhelm the pot or the beans start weighing down the baby corn.

Colorful Cultivars

• Flour corns are thin-skinned, are very starchy and tend to send out deep roots and grow sturdy and tall. While this is ideal for beans, which twine around the corn stalks in order to get more even exposure to sun, it doesn't work so well in the confines of a pot or a self-watering container system. The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service highlights "green corn" varieties that can be picked and eaten while young. The kernels are milky and sweet and can be cooked or munched raw. With a large container, you could try some recommended green corn versions and harvest them before the plants are fully mature. Explore corn named for its colors: Blue Clarage, Bloody Butcher and Black Mexican/Iroquois. In the same adventurous, colorful vein, try some pole beans that will wrap around your cornstalks and produce red and purple tasty beans. Scarlet Runner is a red-flowered heirloom. Genuine Cornfield loves southern summer conditions --- and, obviously, grows along with corn. True Cranberry grows in the South and Northeast and Hopi Purple is a Southwest, drought-tolerant bean plant.