I've asked my grandmother about this concept and said her own grandfather used this method "well before the war", so we are talking the 30's here.
She said they used a corn cultivar locally nicknamed "Big Stick", which had stalks about 4" in diameter. I have no idea what cultivar this was and my grandmother says she hasn't seen it used since the early 50's, so it's probably extinct.
As Dill said above, they used no soil enrichment of any kind and each corn stalk had 3-4ft between each other. Intriguingly enough they did not plant squashes among corn but gourds and especially pumpkins: the latter were of the smaller, dark-rinded European varieties such as Styrian and Piacentina, good for long-term storage and/or pumpkin seed oil.
I think they used one of the many heirloom varieties of green kidney beans, and my grandmother and her sisters were sent to pick the beans and thin out the foliage every few days, precisely to avoid the vines from becoming too heavy and overwhelming the corn.
I hope it was useful for you people: personally I have not enough room here to experiment with this method.Too busy trying out eggplants and tomatoes anyway.
