How much space per plant?

[Megan and Roscoe]

How much space should I put between my squash, melon, and tomato plants. I've got about 8 of each. I'm going to be designing raised beds out of concrete blocks. and I'm tryin to decide if I should do multiple raised beds (one for squash, one for tomatos, one for melons) or if I should do one Long bed and put them all in together. So I want to figure out the space each plant will need.

Also can I put all my pepper plants together in one bed or should I seperate them? And is it ok to plant my onions and chives in the same bed as my peppers.

I'm sorry I'm new to gardening.

[elementfiftyfour]

This answer really depends on how you plan control the plant as it groes. Do you plan to let them spread out on the ground naturally or do you plan to train them up onto a tomato cage or scaffold? Are you going to let them spread out from your raised bed or are you going to keep them within the confines of the bed?

As a general measurement:

A good sized tomato plant will need about a 1-2 foot radius around it if you have it trained up in a tomatoe cage. I would recomend using a cage to keep your tomatos from laying on the ground and rotting.

For melons and squash, you can let them mingle a bit if you let them spread out on the ground. I would recomend about 3-4 feet radius between each plant. If you train them up onto some sort of scafolding such as a wigwam you can get away with planting them a bit closer.


What kind of melons, squash and tomatos are you planting?

Winter squash like butternut spread out and take up much more room than a squash like a Zuchini. Also a water melon plant spreads out much more than a cantaloupe plant.

The same goes for some tomato plants. Depending on the variety you can get away with planting them closer or further apart.


Are all your peper plants HOT or Sweet? You would be safe to keep your HOT pepers some distance from the Sweet pepers. Opposite ends of a 15 foot bed would be good, not like on opposite ends of the yard.

You would be fine to plant onions, chives in the same bed as your peper plants. Like i said you could plant the hot peppers at one end, plant the onions in the middle and them Sweet pepers at the other end of the bed.

[Megan and Roscoe]

As of right now all my peppers are hot peppers. The melons are a mix of cantalope/honey dew/and other small melons. The squash is grey zuchinni and yellow squash, and the tomatoes are 'better boy hybrid'.

Thank you for all the info it is a big help! In the next day or two i will be getting my blocks and should have the garden up by next weekend, Yay!

[opabinia51]

Tomatoes need a 6 foot cedar stake and should be tied up with old nylons (work best). Don't use string as it will cut into the vines.

Squash take up a lot of space and can take over a garden so plant them with companion plants that will grow with them rather than plants the the squash will antagonize. Corn and legumes work well with squash and work well together as well. Legumes will grow up the corn stalks above the squash vines. The three plants will also feed eathother and enhance eachother's growth.

So that would be one area of your garden, Give them a large amount of space.

Look up online to see what companion plants go with peppers and put them in another spot in your garden. Peppers don't take up much space at all so, you don't have to finicky about them.

In my garden, Melons don't take up much space but, in warmer climates, I would assume that they could have a growth rate similar to squash so, keep that in mind.

[iLLogicaL]

What's the reasoning behind keeping hot and sweet peppers separate?

Just curious.

[elementfiftyfour]

What's the reasoning behind keeping hot and sweet peppers separate?

Just curious.

They will cross polinate so you might end up with semi sweet hot peppers. Allot of times that isn't such a bad thing but if you expect to get a nice tastey belle pepper and bite into it to find it is as hot as the Habanero peppers growing next to it then you will be unpleasently surprised.

[iLLogicaL]

Cool, sounds neat to me. I'm growing banana peppers and a hybrid called Tangerine Dream. Maybe I will end up with fruit cocktail?

j/k

[elementfiftyfour]

Cool, sounds neat to me. I'm growing banana peppers and a hybrid called Tangerine Dream. Maybe I will end up with fruit cocktail?

j/k

I'm growing the Tangerine Dream too. Don't they look yummy?

[iLLogicaL]

They do indeed...almost too pretty to eat, but I'm sure I'll get over that ; )

[CWSusan]

I just wanted to add a tip for growing melons, squash and other vining plants. I like to grow them in bushel baskets raised on blocks or even a pile of large rocks. Then the vines can grow out of the basket and cascade down the sides and onto the ground.

This keeps them from taking over valuable garden space that is needed by other vegetables like tomotoes, peppers, greens, etc.

[Burnet]

Re: "Cool, sounds neat to me. I'm growing banana peppers and a hybrid called Tangerine Dream. Maybe I will end up with fruit cocktail?"

The pepper itself (shape, color, size, etc.) wouldn't be affected by cross-pollination - you'd only have to worry about that if you save seeds for next year. If you did save seeds from a cross-pollination and planted them next year, the plants from those seeds would have unpredictable fruit. (I realize you're joking anyway, but thought this might be relevant.)

The official wisdom that I often see is that the heat of the pepper won't be affected either, and that again unless you're saving seeds for next year, cross-pollination will have no affect whatsoever.

But I always wonder about this. _Seeds_ are affected in the year of cross-pollination - you can see this in corn, and I think in cotton, and other crops where the crop is the seed. And seeds in peppers carry much of the heat. And my understanding is that all peppers have at least some heat, so the "mechanism" for producing the heat is present.

So when I've been told firmly that there's no need to isolate hot and sweet peppers, and that all of the stories of "hot sweet peppers" are just errors in seed identification or rogue seeds or confused gardeners, I've always wondered. I don't see any reason why a sweet pepper pollinated by a hot pepper couldn't produce hot seeds in the year of the cross.

Burnet

[CWSusan]

Regarding cross pollintation of peppers -- my experience is that the flavor does change! You can bite into a lovely banana pepper expecting it to have the sweet, mild flavor and then have to rush off to the sink for water because your mouth is on fire!

I agree that they should be planted in separate areas!