Vertical gardening question

Magnoliaman 4/11/2010, 9:54 pm

Those who have had a SFG before, do you worry about placing vertical plants in adjacent squares? For instance, should I separate cucumbers and tomatoes or tomatoes and melons?

Unfortunately, most of the things my wife and kids are excited for me to grow all need to be trellised--tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, beans, and squash. I've got four basic 4x4 boxes, which means I've got sixteen trellised squares--and I could use twice that many. So, I need to take full advantage of those trellis squares, but I don't want to plant too close together.

SirTravers 4/11/2010, 10:03 pm

Have you thought about putting a trellice on 2 sides of each box? While it's not the "official method" it could increase your squares for going up. You could even make an L shaped box so you could reach all the squares easily.

Magnoliaman 4/11/2010, 10:25 pm

No, I hadn't thought of that--but now that I think about it, I could do it on two of the four boxes. I would be hesitant to do it on all four because of shade issues.

Thanks, Sir Travers! All advice is welcome.

jerzyjen 4/11/2010, 11:05 pm

Last year i did my melon, tomatos and cucs all next to each other. The trellis does get a bit crowded but its ok, I just kept an eye on it and was sure to keep pruning the suckers on the tomatos and kept the cucs on their "side" of the trellis.

Magnoliaman 4/11/2010, 11:36 pm

jerzyjen wrote:Last year i did my melon, tomatos and cucs all next to each other. The trellis does get a bit crowded but its ok...

Thanks for the information. How was your trellis constucted?

I'm using the method Mel recommends in his book, i.e., netting attached to a conduit frame. My netting was ordered from the SFG store.

**WardinWake** 4/12/2010, 7:26 am

Magnoliaman wrote:Those who have had a SFG before, do you worry about placing vertical plants in adjacent squares? For instance, should I separate cucumbers and tomatoes or tomatoes and melons?

Unfortunately, most of the things my wife and kids are excited for me to grow all need to be trellised--tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, beans, and squash. I've got four basic 4x4 boxes, which means I've got sixteen trellised squares--and I could use twice that many. So, I need to take full advantage of those trellis squares, but I don't want to plant too close together.

Magnoliaman:

This year I built two 2 X 8 foot boxes just for trellised veggies. The boxes were placed in an L shape with the point of the L directly north. I built my trellis "per the SFG book" and it looks great. The rows that are closest to the trellis have climbing veggies planted and the 'front rows' have shorter veggies such as cauliflower, broccoli, and spinach in them. Another idea that can be used is to place the climbers where they WILL shade the other squares and plant those squares with lettuce and other veggies that tend to bolt in the hot sun. That may slow the bolting down so you can continue to harvest after most other lettuces have gone to seed.

God Bless, Ward.

jenjehle 4/12/2010, 7:52 am

I did both tomatoes and cuks on the same trellis. Same thing, just kept an eye on them so they didn't get to intertwined. The cuks did start to wrap their vines around a few tomato stems. But that was no big deal.

Another idea is that you could plant the tomatoes in the 3rd row back and just use tomato cages for them to grow on. That would free up your back row for the big climbers like cuks and melons on. My cuks last year got around 7-8 feet up and would have probably gone higher had they had the chance!

Happy Gardening!
Jenny

Magnoliaman 4/12/2010, 9:50 am

Thanks for all the good information everyone.

I don't want more than I can take care of, but I think I am going to build a long box just for climbers.

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