I do this with cucumbers watermelons, muskmelons/cantelopes and sweet potatoes. All of these have leaves that are low to the ground, where as pumpkins /winter squash leaves are a couple feet above ground and theses will overtake peppers and eggplant but can be kept out of tomato cages, okra or sunflowers etc. There is and will be an occasional melon vine that wants to go into say the peppers, it is not going to hurt anything unless it starts to climb up on the pepper and in that case just redirect it . Another issue is with harvest., need to be careful where you step to harvest the peppers. A big plus for this method is it allows growing more vegetables in less space and is called intensive gardening. Another plus is the vines act as a living mulch for the vertical plants shading the ground minimizing evaporation More water is lost due to evaporation on bare ground than due to uptake by plants. To answer your question on which plant is bigger the answer is most watermelon vines will sprawl over a larger area than the muskmelons/cantelopes. I also use landscape fabric for all my vine crops except sweetpotatoes. The Cucurbit family is attacked by cucumber beetles and squash bugs (besides others) both of which need hiding places during the day. Mulches such as hay or grass etc are not a good ideal because they give hiding places for the bugs. Landscape fabric is durable and reusable(think helping the enviroment)vice the solid plastic sheets. I use a 5ft wide fabric and run two rows of fabric side by side with the plants placed at the seam and use drip irrigation. Even without drip irrigation, water and rain still soak through the landscape fabric. The fabric will keep out weeds, warms the soil, a plus for early spring or cooler areas and removes burrowing and hiding spots for the cucumber beetle and squash bug. At the end of the season roll up the fabric and store for next year. IF squash bugs and cucumber beetles are not a problem then the hay mulches would be much better choices since they also add organic matter to the soil and don't create a waste product that one day has to be buried. I never use the stadard industry thin plastic that is only used for one season then throw away or actually tilled under. I read somewhere that in florida alone the plastic used on vegetable crops in one season can wrap around the world several times. I have used the same pieces of landscape fabric for 6years now and they still have plenty of life left. Rodger

What Sunset Climate Zone? You can find this on the Sunset Publishing web site or in the Sunset Western Garden Book. When this is known is is possible to be much more accurate in determining what trees might like the climate there than with the USDA Hardiness Zones. Will the new trees be in the way when the alders are to be removed later? What if the alders start to break up before you get to taking them out? I had a bigleaf maple drop a limb on an established magnolia, cleft it right down the center. It did not re-sprout.

Mike, you DO know that you can't grow citrus in the ground where you live, right? Freezing temperatures and that sort of thing, lol! Anyway, about your clay soil: the only real 'fix' for clay soil is organic matter and lots of it. That would include fallen leaves (ground up), grass clippings, bark fines, compost, manure, etc. Leave out the sand! When planting into clay soil, it's best to amend an entire planting bed with your organic material rather than planting hole-by-hole. The latter causes problems that john bonzo mentioned in an earlier post. He's absolutely correct that it is not recommended that anything be added to the planting hole or backfill when digging one hole at a time. But creating a whole new bed is a GOOD thing. Incorporate the organic content with the existing clay. By adding layers of compost and mulch over the planting bed, you will do much to prevent compaction of the clay after amending. I have very hard clay soil and love it. All we do (after the initial tilling event) is add new mulch once or twice a year. Does all that make sense or just confuse the situation?

Of course they slow with age and anything can happen. But so many times I have seen (and even experienced personally) how the enthusiasm for one specific cultivar can cause us to rationalize it's choice five ways from Sunday only to admit our errors ten years later. If there is only one lesson to be learned about gardening it would be to choose one specific cultivar for one specific area instead of falling in love with the idea of something and trying to talk ourselves into thinking it could work within our limitations. We somehow get attached to a convoluted vision of how we think a tree should behave and spend tons of energy convincing ourselves and everyone else how we will make it work, but often the trees have other ideas. That is such a prime focal point in your garden- you only have so many such spots and a light, delicate, airy small tree seems just the thing. I would only hope that you choose something that you can spend time sitting back and admiring in it's full glory rather than pruning and staking and attempting to bend it to your will for the rest of your life. Yes, you can "get all bonsai" on it and restrict it's growth my making pruning your primary hobby. But do realize that the growth restrictions achieved by bonsai techniques have as much, if not more, to do with root pruning as they do with trimming the canopy. Good luck. Please update us in 2026!