This sounds like a great plan! We have 1.5 acres of pretty steep land, and we will probably put some cowpeas here and there because they enrich the earth. Very little of our land is flat enough for a raised bed, but we can squeeze one or two specimens here and there. Thanks so much for your fabulous plan!!

You could also plant your pumpkin and watermelons outside of your box - use a large gopher basket in the area where you'll be planting them/where the roots will go. That's what I do, saves me the raised bed for use with smaller plants that you don't want to individually basket.

We are very familiar with gopher baskets! It's a good idea, and we might use it!! We have so many trees planted in them. I think eventually they rust out, but takes some time. Everything on our property is watered by drip. The soaker hose in the new planter box is a first for us.

Plus pumpkins have very large leaves, and watermelons will climb over just about anything. Cowpeas don't necessarily stay in a controlled form - I usually actually give them a little support, maybe a few strands of binders twine tied between 4 ft stakes. Bush beans may do fine in a small space, making a nice little clump, but healthy cowpeas can be 5 ft tall and spreading across the bed. I think I would plant a double row along one long edge, north side, and provide support like I said. A double row because they will help support each other as well. Use a little more than the plant spacing metric for the seeds. If you are moving your melons and pumpkins elsewhere, I would put no more than 2 or 3 okra plants on one end, and maybe 4 eggplants at the other end. That will pretty much take all the space, in my opinion.

I'd be a little concerned about an 8" soil depth. That sounds shallow. Unless you've dug up and amended the soil under the bed. Then the roots can go through the hardware cloth to their hearts content. But if there is rock or hardpan underneath, you'll end up with rootbound plants. To the extent you want to fit a lot in that bed, increasing the volume of soil available to the roots would be good.

@daninthedirt, 8" is just the good stuff above the hardware cloth. Under that is decomposed granite AKA mostly sand with a little dirt. Hubs did dig down pretty far and tossed the soil around, but he didn't amend it. Nothing was growing there before, so it should have some nutrients..

The big worry is gophers. We do our best to control them, but it's an endless battle. There is no rock underneath. Decomposed Granite. The gophers have an easy life digging through sandish stuff. We do have lots of huge boulders on this property, but in this particular spot there are none.

I am a huge fan of root pruning pots cuz I've seen the results with and without them. Air pruning a root is like pruning a branch. New branches appear. Same with roots. Nothing circles, just all the roots use every bit of dirt they can. It's a beautiful thing to see. If a gopher feels the need to nibble under the hardware cloth, the roots will just put out feeders. Pretty sure it will work. I'll be dosing with fertilizer often.

@LoneJack, I have to say I love your plan! My seeds arrive in 3 days and I will follow it to the T! Don't know how hot it is in KC, but I planned the veggies based on USDA recommendations for what to plant in my zone in this season, and what I know about Pampa Texas, which is on the Panhandle, which is really close to what our climate is except for the snow in winter.

My ex mother in law had a garden full of black eyed peas, okra, eggplant, etc., and she taught me how to cook it all. The watermelon! Aunt AKA "Aint" Pat had a block long row between the feed corn, and we would just walk down the row. She'd pick one where the curl was dead, lift it, let it drop, we'd eat the heart and leave it there. Those were the days....

We'd eat the feed corn too, and it was no fun to shuck. Too many worms!

I won't be dropping my one or two watermelons. I'll bring them in, chill them, invite the neighbors over for a snack!

Suzi

Well as long as it is dug up underneath, nutrients and even amendments from the bed will percolate down into the DG/sand. Sounds like roots will be able to expand down there. I guess the gophers down there will stir things up a bit too. I don't think gophers eat feeder roots, just taproots. But especially Okra has a much deeper taproot than that, so there may be a gopher issue there.

At this moment there are no gopher mounds anywhere near this new raised bed. But "You build it, they will come," could be prophetic. Somehow the gophers just know.

Like the tomato worms... they just know, and they will come.

OK, Suzi, this was a rookie plan, but it worked! DH is a professional pumpkin carver (former wood carver) and we were given some giant pumpkin seeds by one of the growers. We were also given a load of horse manure. We mounded the HM around the gopher cages and filled with regular garden mix from a landscape place we use often. We made sure there was a well for the water to soak in. We planted the pumpkins in 4" pots as suggested and when the 3rd leaf emerged, that was the direction the main vine was going to grow. It worked!

I don't know if this is the same with regular pumpkins, or melons, but it worked for our giant pumpkins! We ended up with a few 300#+ pumpkins!

The thing was the 3rd leaf giving you the direction the vine will go! Nancy