Last year I grew three cukes on a 4' wide trellis, and had more than we could eat fresh, give away and pickle. For your 4x4' zucchini bed, I think you could do 2-3 plants if you give them room to sprawl beyond the borders of the bed. I'd think hard about doing more than 1 or 2 unless you've got multiple varieties, though because they are so prolific. I don't have much experience with melons, but I think it depends on your variety. I'd imagine that large-fruited melons with long vines would need more space per plant, whereas some melons grow 1-lb fruits and only 3-5 foot vines, so you could get away with closer spacing on those.

The mid Atlanic is good region for growing cantaloupes and watermelons, and very good for squash. Main feature is grow what suits you best. Most backyard growers like the smaller varieties, due to space limitations. Go slow on the exotics, just trying one or two at a time. Baker Creek has an incredible number of varieties so you should find something you like.

I kinda gave up on squash and melons in the last few years; put my emphasis on other things. But there are varieites that will work, especially if you want to trellis the vines. (I used old panty hose to make slings for the fruit!) Delicata squash is one that worked for me, and the 8-ball zucchini. A friend of mine has grown Wee-Be-Little pumpkins and really likes them.

Shelley, Simply trellis your rattlesnake beans alongside the fence and grown them wherever you want. I grow beans on my woven wire fences all the time with little space between them and the shorter plants growing in the ground alongside them. You'll be amazed how happily other, shorter plants grow with trellised beans (and cucumbers, icebox melons, muskmelons, winter squash, gourds, etc.) growing right beside them or behind them. I trellis everything that is remotely vining in nature. Your dwarf tomato plants from The Dwarf Project ought to coexist peacefully with trellised beans growing on the fence behind them. The Dwarf Project tomato plants only get 2.5 to 4' tall, more or less, and are stocky and sturdy and won't mind having trellised beans (or anything else) growing behind them. Obviously taller indeterminate tomato varieties wouldn't be as tolerant of beans growing on the fence behind them. Scout your beds regularly because the bean plants will want to climb onto the tomato plants and cages to grow. When the vining plants do that, I just remove them from whatever cage or plant they're trying to latch onto and work that errant grown back through its trellis. Then I lecture it about not trying to take over the world. Luckily pole beans climb fast, so your bean plants should grow fast enough that the dwarf tomato plants cannot shade them out while they are small, and once the dwarf tomato plants are tall enough and wide enough that they might shade them out, the beans will be growing taller than the tomato plants. You also can grow Ha'ogen on a trellis. In the beginning, when I first trellised cantaloupes and muskmelons, I used knee-high stockings tied to the trellises to serve as slings or supports to hold the melons. I was afraid the weight of the melons would pull down the vines or that the weight would cause the melons to fall off the vines prematurely. I did that every year with great results, and then in one bad fire year, I didn't have time to tend the garden, and the melons grew fine without any sort of sling or support to keep the vine or fruit from falling off the trellis. Because I mulch heavily, I don't even worry about the muskmelons falling off the vines when they are mature. Usually, I can see and smell them and know when they are maturing and just pull them when they are forming the abscission layer and preparing to fall, but even if I miss one and it falls to the ground, it lands on that nice cushy 4-6" layer of mulch and doesn't crack. Once I knew the stocking slings or supports weren't necessary, I stopped wasting my time. To some extent you can control how your beans, squash and melons interact by planting the beans first and then waiting another month or six weeks before your plant the squash and melons. That gives the beans time to grow and gain some height before you plant the melons and squash. In my garden, all the trellised plants that are growing close together tend to run all together into one big massive wall of green, and I don't mind it at all. They still produce loads more than we can eat fresh, leaving plenty to be preserved for future meals. Sometimes it is fun to watch them slug it out to see who wins. (In my garden, so far, Seminole pumpkin outgrows and outlasts everything else, so it is the queen of my garden.) Don't be afraid to try trellising one plant behind another. You never will know what will work for you, in your soil and growing condtions and with your set-up, until you try it. Some of my most favorite growing methods and plant combinations were nothing but experiments the first time I tried them. One year my beloved pink eye purple hull southern peas decided they wanted to be tomatoes. They outgrew their bed, reached across the 2' -wide garden pathway, and climbed the tomato cages all the way to the top....then cascaded back down again. Was it a problem? Well, it was a problem as far as using the pathway was concerned, but it wasn't a problem in terms of growth and production. We had huge yields of tomatoes and huge yields of PEPH peas. You would have thought the tomatoes wouldn't have liked having pea vines climbing all over their cages and partially shading them, but they didn't seem to mind at all. Since sunscald sometimes is a problem on tomatoes in the hottest part of the summer, maybe I should routinely add one PEPH plant to each tomato cage. (grin) I now grow all the southern peas in the back garden since it has sandier soil, and I don't grow a lot of tomatoes back there, but in the year they shared those tomato cages, it wasn't a problem. Clearly, it isn't a planting combination I ever would have thought of or planted on my own. I like little garden surprises like that, although they don't always end well. It is just that this particular garden combination worked. If you're already running out of space with your 2' wide beds, are we going to see 3' wide or 4' wide beds next year? Lawn grass? Who needs a lawn? Dawn