> Im just growing for fresh veggies for my little family of 3 and of > course the love of watching things grow :) Dont want too little and > certainly not an over abundance either i was thinking where i already > have 10 tomato plants to continue that pattern and just do 10 of each > veggie if that works. How big of a space would i need? Danger, danger! One pumpkin can take up as much space as ten tomatoes. :) My opinion: - Ten tomatoes: Assuming that they all live and thrive, that's a whole lot of tomatoes, far more than you're likely to need for fresh eating, but, hey, there's always sauce. I'd recommend giving each tomato a minimum of an eighteen inch by eighteen inch square. - Peppers: I'd give them at least a foot by a foot. They're much less productive than tomatoes; ten plants would be fine. - Ten healthy successful cucumber plants will feed Nebraska. OK, maybe that's an overstatement, but I wouldn't grow that many. My plan for my garden this year is to prepare three spots for vining cucumbers, plant three seeds in each spot, and then thin to one plant per spot when they're all up and healthy, for a total of three plants. - Ten healthy successfun pumpkin plants will cover Nebraska with leaves. OK, I'm really exaggerating, but pumpkins sprawl over a _lot_ of space. On the other hand, if you're not overprotective of your lawn you can plant the pumpkins near the edge of the vegetable garden and let them crawl over the lawn. But i still wouldn't plant more than five, and I say five only because it's always upsetting when you plant only two or so, and one of them dies. - Ten corn plants, on the other hand, isn't quite enough. The customary minimum recommendation for corn is a four-plant by four-plant block, sixteen plants total. The block planting increases the chances of good pollination. I plant my corn at eighteen inches; many people plant it much closer. This post was edited by chickenfreak on Thu, Apr 11, 13 at 0:57

Just an update but first I should point out that this is just a way to get melons started early, not a season long growing system. My plan is to remove the clear poly in 2-3 weeks when our ave high temp nears 80F and there is little danger of further frost. At that time I may put down woven black weed barrier but usually just let them run on bare ground. Weather has been unusually cold the last few days, 22F night before last, but that hasn't slowed down the melon growth by much. Protected the three melon hills with a 40W bulb inside each mini greenhouse and tarp. Here's the good part. Melons are growing so fast I had to raise the upper layer of clear 6mil poly. The first set of true leaves has individual leaflets three inches in diameter. The second set of true leaves is expanding. Plant quality is equal to what I would expect from a May planting and vastly superior to anything I've ever started in pots. And these plants have established roots right where I want them. If you want or need extra season for your melons this is the way to go. The Fruitnut

use potting media in pots.... it will reduce the weight of the pots SIGNIFICANTLY .... i moved 1750 potted plants.. no big deal.. other than the massive physical work .. but i was digging in the prior summer .. and ended up moving 1/14.. and had 4 months. to get the house in order,.. before i worried about the garden ... you are not thinking straight.. in thinking.. that you are going to move your house .. and waste time.. worrying about plants.. or building garden beds.. take small divisions.. POT THE PROPERLY .... leave bulbs ... leave large things ... and spend the time to get the house in order,. tending your pots.. and if it takes you all summer to prepare the beds.. so be it.. your plants are properly potted.. just never leave black pots in the sun.. the pot itself gets too hot ... most good nurseries have a recycle bin for pots.. buy a large bag of GOOD potting medium.... and dont pay for pots ... though i know you love your plants.. there isnt much there.. that i would take with me .... as in .. they are NOT $100 specimen plants .... think long and hard.. about leaving ANYTHING you can buy for under $10 ....by the time you fill the pot with media.. and add your labor.. the hauling.. etc... you will have spent $15 to save a $10 plant... if you see what i mean ... e.g. cant you get a new chive for about $2? ... and lavender is near impossible to grow.. let alone grow in a pot.. or handle the move ....so i would skip it ... and frankly.. i wouldnt bother with bulbs ... but of course.. its up to you ... one other thought.. is mom or someone friend local.. that you could immediately move small pieces .. to a holding area.. for moving them in fall.. after you have figured out what to do with them??? i wish you luck.. but dont kill yourself worrying about the garden .... it would be much easier.. to reward yourself with a $200 xmas gift certificate.. and have a new garden mailed to your house for next spring.. rather than go thru.. what i went thru .. ken

Shelley, I think the answer to this question depends on what other crop you would/could put there and what kind of harvest it would/could produce, compared to the possible production from the melon vines. I'll preface this by saying that I love cantaloupes and watermelons so I would leave the vines if I thought they had a chance of maturing fruit. Where I live, we are still about 90 days from the date of our average first freeze, so I would expect melons to mature from blossoms on my plants now because the varieties I grow all have DTMs of 65-80 days, so even if I just had new plants sprouting now, they'd have time, if everything went perfectly, to give me mature fruit. My plants have been in the ground for months and are still healthy, so today's flowers will be mature cantaloupes in maybe 40 to 50 days, depending on variety. My cantaloupes have plenty of foliage and are blooming, so I have left their bed alone this week as I have been tearing out the summer garden to put in the fall garden. There are a couple of caveats though. First of all, your melon plants need full sun all day from dawn to dusk in autumn in order to get enough daylight as the day length grows shorter every day. If they are in what is part-sun now or dappled shade, I'd be less likely to leave them. Secondly, they need to not only be blooming but also be putting out new foliage. The reasons your melons have been sunscalding is because the plants don't have enough foliage to shade them. So, if the drought has been so hard on them that they cannot or will not put out new leaves along with the blooms, any melons that form likely will sunscald. For me, these are two factors I'd take into consideration before deciding whether to keep the melons. Another factor to consider as far as when to pull the plug would be your temperatures. If we have the typical hot September, the melons will get enough heat to grow well. However, is September turns very cool early, even though it stays above freezing, then the melons likely will have poor flavor and won't be worth eating. You get the best-tasting melons in hot, dry weather. The cooler and wetter it is as they mature, the poorer the flavor. While my cantaloupes have heavy foliage and are doing great, my watermelons have struggled. I think the 'Seminole' winter squash in the adjacent bed out-competed them for water after I stopped watering in July, so the watermelon vines just don't have the vigor they should, and when I make it that far north in the garden next week as I do the summer-to-fall conversion, I'll yank out the watermelon vines. So, if you think they have a good chance of producing tasty melons, keep them. If you feel like they don't have good vigor and won't produce as much as something else you would plant there, take them out and plant something that will produce more. Larry, I think your rains fell too heavily at the wrong time and that is causing the splitting. I almost never have that problem here because it usually doesn't rain here very much in summer, but one August we got 5" of rain in one day and a few days later my melons literally began exploding. I always try to plant my melons in a raised bed in what I consider the driest part of my garden in the hope that they won't crack if we happen to get heavy rainfall, and I never water them much, if at all. This year I did water them once a week, but not heavily--maybe 1/2 to 1" a week. I stopped watering in July while most of the melons were immature and they continued growing and ripening. Since then I've harvested about 40 melons, roughly 1-2 a day most days, and it is the best melon year in a long time. I attribute that to the lack of cucumber beetles this year. No beetles. No cucurbit diseases being spread around. I try to grow my watermelons dryland style as much as possible, though in a year like last year (11" of rain through the end of August) they did have to have irrigation most of the summer. This year, with almost twice as much train through the same point in time, I only watered them a little because the air temps were staying between 108-112 at that time and I just didn't think I'd get blossoms and fruit if I wasn't watering. A lot of the people who dryland farm melons near Thackerville, which is famous for their delicious melons grown in deep sandy soil, rarely irrigate them and they cut off the water completely long before the melons begin to ripen. They have it down to a science in a way that I never will. I just guess when I think it is about time to deny them water. When rain falls at the wrong time, though, there is nothing you can do to keep it from ruining the melons. Yesterday I cut into the next-to-the-last watermelon that is sitting there on the kitchen counter. It was a Yellow Baby. Today we'll finish it and then there is one more melon sitting there on the counter for tomorrow that is either New Orchid or Yellow Doll. After that, all we'll have left is cantaloupes, unless I find a watermelon hiding under foliage somewhere. The flavor of delicious, vine-ripened melons straight from the garden is so incredibly good in a hot, dry year that it is worth whatever you have to go through to raise them. Dawn