hey mike, i'm a novice gardener, but i'll tell ya what happened to me :) i did the square foot gardening thing, and was told that i could plant 2 cukes per square. i planted 2 squares each of slicing cukes and pickling cukes, within 6 feet of each other with squash in between.

i never did get the squash to vine, (guess it wasn't a vining variety!) but my cukes grew and grew and got so tangled up together i couldn't tell which was which! for me it was a huge mess. but then again, i'm not sure i knew what i was doing....

i'm sure someone will be along soon to give you better info than i can :) i'll be waiting to read their answers as well.

dody :)

The only vining "summer" squash I've grown is zucchetta rampicante. Most of the others I'm familiar with (and all of the ones I've grown) are not vining so a trellis wouldn't do any good. Bush varieties spread quite a bit but there are compact varieties. If other vining varieties are like zuchetta rampicante, look out! Those suckers try to take over the universe.

You'll have to wait for someone else to come along and cover winter squash as they're not a favorite of mine and I'm about the farthest you can get from having a clue. LOL

Cukes, again, you have to know whether or not it's a vining or bush type. Vining types don't need terribly much room and just two plants won't give you many fruit. If you want just a slicer now and then for salads, it might do you fine. I've never grown just two myself.

Also, I've found that cukes need good air circulation to avoid diseases. I'm not sure that putting them up against the fence so closely would be a good thing but it depends on the particular environment, I'd think.

Ugh. I feel like I'm not making any sense. I've got a thick case of head fog today. Someone who does make sense will be along shortly, I'm sure. LOL

Diane

I have been raising my cukes on a trellis for years, but don't know how they will do next to a solid wood fence. Mine are in open garden. If it gets that much sun, you may have a problem with too much head reflecting off the fence. I would worry about that more than disease. You can always try it and find out.

I reread your post and am a bit confused. Will the Trellis be only 4 ft long parallel to the fence? Anyway, as just said, summer squash sprawls, not vines. I plant my cucs too close and then thin to 6" apart. So 4 ft of trellis would give you plenty of cucs and you could plant the summer squash in front of the cucs. Be prepared to pull your cucs up in midsummer tho. They can't take our heat and humidity and go on bearing. At least that's what I do. Sometimes you can squeeze in a fall crop.

Mike,

I'm afraid the cukes and squash likely will need more air flow than they are likely to get with a wooden privacy fence just a few inches behind them. They can be really prone to fungal diseases. A lot would depend, though, on the lay of your land and how much wind movement you have there. I'm in a creek hollow with woodland on three sides, so sometimes air flow here isn't as good as I'd like. On the other hand, friends who live 2 miles away on top of a hill have all the air flow (and more) that they want. So, evaluate your site and try to decide if you think you have enough air movement on a consistent basis during the growing season to make it ok for you to grow something that close to a wooden privacy fence. You also could grow 4-6" from a fence if you're willing to regularly preventatively spray your vines with an antifungal product, which I'm not willing to do.

I probably wouldn't plant any closer to the fence than 15-18" if I was trying to grow without a fungicide. Raising those crops in an area of poor air flow is a recipe for disaster since most years many parts of OK have plenty of rainfall and plenty of humidity.

As others have noted, there are not a large number of vining summer squash. One vining summer squash is a Ukrainian variety called 'Odessa', available from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com). It produces zucchini-type fruit that are white. Another vining summer squash is 'Tatume', also available from Baker Creek, and it produces a green, somewhat elongated zucchini.

If you want to grow the vining 'Zucchino Rampicante' (aka Zucca d'Albenga) that Diane mentioned, just plant it and let it climb the house and shade the house from the hot, summer sun. By fall, no one will be able to find your house under the vines.

For vining winter squash, you could grow Black Futsu. It climbs a woven wire fence in my garden and produces small-enough winter squash that they don't need any extra support. Seminole would be another good vining winter squash. It climbs my garden fence (woven wire, so good air flow) and then climbs up into the trees. They are tons of vining winter squash, but unless you're going to provide support (like slings tied to the trellis to help support their weight) for the winter squash, you need to choose the ones that produce smaller squash.

Most vining cucumbers are great on trellises but also benefit greatly from having good air flow. Even in fairly hot and dry weather they (and squash) can be prone to powdery mildew and downy mildew, making good air flow an important ally. However, even with good air flow, during hot weather you still may have issues with powdery mildew and some other leafspotting diseases.

Dawn

Thanks for the advice. I should have researched the squash seed I got a bit better. I got butterstick hybrid and yep it isn't vining. So ill do 4 cukes and make a trellis a foot or so out from the fence and put the squash in front.

Thanks
Mike

When I lived in Denver, I had a small compost pile near a six foot privacy fence. It wasn't even in the garden and I didn't think it got enough sun for a crop, but I was wrong. Volunteer cukes came up everywhere so I drove down some tent stakes and tied string to them and up to the top of the fence. I made pickles, and pickles, and more pickles about every 3 days all season.

Mike - I grew English cukes (burpless) last year on a fence panel that was about 6' long by 4' high...and I had PLENTY...about 24 pints of pickles plus what we ate fresh and the ones that got too big because they were hidden. They did sprawl out about 18" each side, but we tried to keep them "trained" to the fence. This was also out in the open...so air-flow wasn't an issue. I think if you keep airflow in mind...and give the squash at LEAST 24" from them...you should do fine. Just my 2 cents worth. Keep us posted as the growing season progresses? I'm sure there are others that would benefit from your experiment.

Paula

Mike,

I used the same setup this past summer as you're describing. Our next door neighbor was getting rid of several sections of chain length fence that we hung from our wooden privacy fence. Hubby used long screw hooks to hold the top section of fence and the bottom simply swung loose. I originally planned to grow beans on these but ended up putting cuc's on them instead. We planted 6 different varieties and the heat tolerant varieties did much better than the pickling ones (which probably should be blamed on the gardener, oops!). Those that did exceptionally well were Armenian cuc, Poona Kheera cuc and Lemon cuc. In fact, the lemon cuc grew like wildfire, grabbed hold of a nearby Yoshino Cherry tree and continued growing the entire height of the tree. We have a flat blackyard and since the darn Oklahoma wind never STOPS blowing, I guess we didn't lack air circulation. We had room to plant in front of the fence row so we gain more overall planting space by vertical gardening without having to extend any existing beds.

Good luck!
Lynn

Thanks a ton for the ideas. Lynn you just gave me an good idea. I think i will attach chain link or something similar at the top and then angle it away from the wood fence at the bottom that would give a good amount of air flow. this spot is on the north side of my yard and the south winds get funneled right though it.

ill be sure and post what i end up doing.

Thanks
Mike

I would really like to try the 'Zucchino Rampicante' (aka Zucca d'Albenga)but I haven't been able to find seeds in stores, where do you all get your seeds?

Is this also what people call "zuchetta" or "tromboncino" ? I didn't get any regular squash last year, due to bugs, and I read that this one isn't as bug friendly. What's been your experience?

Thanks! Jammie

Jammie,

One of my favorite seed companies is Seeds From Italy, which imports seeds (mostly Franchi-Sementi seeds) from Italy. I grow a lot of their greens, beans, tomatoes, melons, zukes and winter squash. They usually have Tromba Zuchetta d'Albenga. I'll link their website below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Seeds From Italy

Jammie, It is the same squash by all of those names. Baker Creek has it listed under summer squash.

A closer cousin of the Zucchetta R is the Cucuzzi, far more similar to each other than to the standard zuccini. One of the folk names for both is the Serpent of Sicily. I am trying these along a fence this year. They are from Lake Valley Seeds I bought at Horn's Seed Co. in OKC.

When I grew cucuzzi it "escaped" from the garden, grew up and over the garden fence, and then climbed high up into the nearby trees where, of course, I couldn't reach them in order to pick them while they were a reasonable size. The squash high up in the tree grew quite long. Finally, a neighbor who could see the green "things" hanging from the trees while driving up and down the road asked me why I had so many green tree snakes (a somewhat common native green non-venomous snake is common in our area) hanging upside down from the trees all day long. I guess from the road, the sepent gourds really did look like serpents!

In the fall, I pulled the vines and gourds down out of the trees and gave the gourds, which were very hard-shelled and dry by that point, to the dogs to play with. They carried them around, tossed them in the air, chewed on them, etc.

The next year, we had cucuzzi growing on the fence around the dog yard, with the plants having sprouted from seeds the dogs scattered around the dog yard while playing with their old, dry, cucuzzi gourds. I had thought I'd harvest and use the cucuzzi but the dogs harvested theirs as squash whenever they felt like it and played with them and ate them. Even my dogs are gardeners, it seems, and one of them likes green tomatoes, so he is banned from the fenced garden.

I plan on running my cukes up a trellis this year. I let them ramble last year. When the wilt hit, it was a sad sight to behold. Also, I learned the hard way what those beautiful black and red 'waspy-bugzy' things were! Almost had heat stroke out spending hours and hours in the hot, broiling sun diggin' those 'maggots on 'roids' out of my poor squash plants. I don't want to, but it may look like it's snowing around my plants this year. :(

When do you zone7 guys put out your tomato plants? Wait 'til April 15? Now, with night covers??? Believe it or not I grew up with HUGE gardens...my mom, granny, and aunt put out HUGE gardens and helped each other "put up". Unfortunately, I wasn't paying very close attention. Those wonderful women have all passed over now, so I have to bug you guys!

You can plant tomato plants whenever you choose, provided your forecast looks good and you are able to cover them up well at night if cold temperatures and frost threaten.

Most people here plant in April, but the exact timing varies depending on what our often erratic weather is doing.

I might start planting tomorrow or the next day, but only because I have frost blankets to use to cover up the plants because our forecast has one night in the 30s in it next week. I'm hoping that's the last one, but here in my part of southcentral OK, one night a week in the 30s with patchy frost is pretty common the whole month of April. Our last frost date is March 28th, but we usually have frost after that. When they redo the 30-year averages, I expect our county's average last frost date to slide into April a bit.

OSU recommends April 10th as the earliest recommended planting date for tomatoes.

Dawn