Garden update

[sleuth]

What a busy spring it's been, and a cold, wet one, too.

13 of our raised beds were put in place and 20 cubic yards of topsoil was brought in from along the river bottoms to fill them up. In the process of filling them I tore up the yard pretty good with the Dingo that I rented.

Many of our seed starts have been transplanted, including onions, chives, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, lettuce, toi choi, and more. We also planted 5 raspberry canes and a bunch of potato starts. The lettuce got leggy and the cauliflower is struggling too. The chives and onions basically fell apart when we tried to transplant them, so I don't know if they're going to make it or not. We've got a bunch of tomato starts that we had to transplant to larger containers already.

Now I'm looking at doing some reconfiguring of the plans for the pumpkins and melons. I originally had some pretty large beds planned for them but then I discovered you can use a smaller space and grow them vertically. Who knew you could grow big heavy melons and pumpkins vertically?

Anybody know how much space per plant is required to do that?

 

[~gd]

never tried growingthem up. I had low raised beds [1' mostly so things would not drown on my clay soil during the rainy season.] I did grow cukes up mostly for ease of picking. But the heavy stuff had their roots in the bed but the vines were trained to grow outside the box they took up too much space in the beds so they were allowed to spraw over the lawn [which was mostly dormant during the hot dry summer]. Be sure to keep your eye out to be sure they get enough water, they use more than I thought they would.

 

[Denim Deb]

Depends on the plant. For things like pumpkins, you need 2 ft between plants, but I'm not sure for the others. Some, like cucumbers, can be planted 8" apart. And, you may need to prune them. If you have any really heavy fruit, you may need to put a "sling" under them to help support them. I'll be trying it as well this year, but I prefer the smaller pumpkins and watermelons, so I shouldn't need the sling.

 

[dfr1973]

Busy spring, indeed! We're also putting in garden boxes along with planting. I feel so tired, between the garden boxes and the new chicken coops ... BUT we had our first homegrown chicken last week, and the first bunch of green beans should be ready next week (along with another chicken).

 

[Denim Deb]

OK, I checked my notes on growing squash, etc vertically. For winter squash, you want 2 ft between plants. For summer squash, it's 16 inches. For melons, it's 1 ft. And, for cukes, it's 6 inches. You want the fence at LEAST 5 ft high.