I would just encourage you to remember how big they can get...Do you have to mow in the area where they would run to? Last year I had the biggest pain in the butt with them. My Dearly Beloved insisted on mowing where they were so every time I had to go out and pick up the vines etc..

Nope, I don't have to mow there.

I guess the problem is that I don't know how big a muskmelon plant will get. Last year I tried Minnesota Midget which I wasn't impressed with, so this year I was going to try out a full sized plant. So this is pretty much my first year growing them.

I was thinking of a trellis, but I don't really want to rig up support hamocks when the melons start getting big. I'm a little doubtful that the trellis I made up for the MM last year will be big enough anyway.

I use garden staples (made out of wire hangers in a U-shape) to circle melons vines aroung the planting hill. The concentric circles can be 6 feet or so across at the end of the season. As well you can prune the vines back to two or three flowers to concentrate the fruiting effort.

Here is a link that might be useful: HarvestToTable.com

I wonder if I could make garden staples out of wood? Maybe a green stick that still has flex. The garden staple sounds like a a great idea, but I like to keep fall clean-up easy and don't relish the idea of trying to find all those dang pieces of wire.
Kay.

I've decided to let my Crenshaw melon plants sprawl this year, too. Since I've expanded my garden, tying the melon vines to a sturdy trellis and supporting the fruit as well are just additional chores that I want to avoid.

My setup is different than yours though. I plan to grow eight plants in a 4' x 20' "raised bed" that has a framework of cinderblocks and just keep the vines inside the cinderblock outline. I have a note to myself to mulch that area with black plastic since melons love the heat and the mulch is good for keeping the fruit clean.

But you know what? Melon vines will root at various nodes if they can find soil contact. That enables them to take in more water and nutrients, surely good for the plants.

So I don't know if I'll mulch the plants with plastic or not. I WILL however let them sprawl and keep them herded inside the cinderblock frame.

So do people think I could let them sprawl around the pepper plants, or is that a disaster waiting to happen?

I don't think you'd need to curve the top of a stick over the vine to make the vine guides you want. You could just put the vine where you want it and place a small stick on both sides of the vine to keep it there. The sticks will eventually become part of the soil even if you leave them there through the winter. The vines hug the earth, probably looking for places to root, so they won't lift themselves up to escape your guides. They may climb upward with their tendrils if they can find anything to climb, but they're just as happy sprawling and will instead cling to each other.

GG

I think the melon vines would try to climb your pepper plants and snuff them if you don't put a barrier of some sort between them and then watch them carefully to be sure the melon vines don't wander over into your pepper plants. A bale of hay, maybe? I think you could keep your vines in their own home-space with that kind of barrier. At any rate, something that would benefit both the melons and the peppers.

I do this all the time. it allows taking advantage of the vertical and horizontal growing space. I plant Peppers tomatoes eggplant even okra and an occasional sunflower herbs etc in my melons I also plant sweet potatoes between the above but not with the melons since they both vine. I am a commercial seed producer and a certified organic grower. The main thing to remember is shading. Peppers eggplant do not get that tall and will cause minimal shading and with the melon vines spreadout there is plenty of sun. Tomatoes okra and sunflowers grow tall and quick and will shade out so these are spaced futher apart to minize shading. For example I plant a 125ft row of melons each hill 10ft apart. In between each hill I would plant 4 peppers or eggplant. If planting tomatoes okra or sunflowers I would only plant 2 between the melons

GG

I meant to ask you much earlier and forgot. What are the dimensions of your bed? I was envisioning a relatively small space and I see that Rodger has lots more space than that so can grow things differently.

Bed is probobly 4ft by 20ft maybe (sorry, I'm not the best at estimating, it's along the short side of our ranch house). I got 16 pepper plants into that space last year, this year it'll be half that or less. If I had vines they could get a little extra room between the window wells too (I don't plant the peppers right up next to the house).

It's not a bad little space, but South facing near a brick wall so I need to plant heat lovers there.

Rodger - Do you find the melon plants try to vine up the peppers? And have you do this planting with just muskmelon or with watermelon too (do watermelon plants get a lot bigger? My husband is trying to convince me to plant watermelon instead)?

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