Can you grow zucchini and squash on a vertical frame?
Darin McGrew
dara-...@starrtails.com wrote:
> I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
> list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
> zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
> 9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
> vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
> anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
We've grown winter squash and crook-neck summer squash on a trellis.
It works, but they still take up a lot of space. Unlike cucumbers and
melons, which have short branches attaching moderate-sized leaves to
long vines, squash plants tend to have long branches and large leaves.
"Bush" varieties have compact vines, so all those long branches and
large leaves originate very close to each other and the plant forms a
dense thicket. They trellis fairly well, but you still need to give
them plenty of room. The main advantage of trellising is keeping the
plant from sprawling all over the ground.
More traditional "vine" varieties grow *long* vines. We haven't tried
these.
I think _Jeff Ball's 60-Minute Vegetable Garden_ talks about trellising
squash plants. The techniques in this book are very similar to (and
compatable with) those in _SFG_.
Darin McGrew, mcg...@alumni.stanford.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
You learn nothing new the third time a mule kicks you in the head.
Pat Kiewicz
In article <35070081...@news.earthlink.net>, dara-...@starrtails.com
says...
>
>I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
>list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
>zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
>9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
>vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
>anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
Zuchinni varieties available here are 'bush' type plants. They can
be staked, if you use a short, very stout stake (3-4') but will have
to be tied.
Winter squash and pumpkins can be grow on a trellis, but the large
fruit will need some sort of support. (They get heavy enough to
tear free of the vine before they ripen.) The problem with growing
squash on trellises, though, is that they are more vulnerable to
vine borers. When they sprawl, the vines can root at every node.
If the vine is trellised, and a borer escapes your control, that's
pretty much it for the vine. But a vine that has rooted at several
places can still produce. I used to have less room to garden and
speak from painful experience. I let my vining squash sprawl, now
that I have room.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI
SORRY! My return address is munged. Drop the BOMB
to get through.
dkinbluz
Dara wrote:
> I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
> list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
> zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
> 9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
> vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
> anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
>
> Dara
>
> Mel Bartholomew updated his Sq ft. gardening method in a past issue of
> Organic Gardening (Oct '96 I think) that revised the method for
> planting squash using a trellis and it takes something like 1 plant per
> 2 sq ft. Perhaps your library has the back issues or at least a way to
> search the articles.
Happy Gardening
dkinbluz
Alf Christophersen
dara-...@starrtails.com (Dara) wrote:
>I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
>list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
>zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
>9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
>vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
>anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
As a child in 1958 I tried to sow 15 seeds of squashes, one of the a
round giant, some smaller. They had plenty of nutrition available. The
was planted at the top of a slope, about 5 m long, quite steep. In front
of that slope it was growing several oaks.
In the autumn we had to wade below lots of squashes hanging down from
the oak branches. The plant did first grow downwards the slope (the
plants growing the other direction onto the road, was either crashed by
cars or was turned around to grow down the slope they too. When they
came to the bottom, most vines did grow up in the trees and climbed
further out in the branches. It was a fantastic view. I got several
hundreds of kg to my mothers astonishment, and later, desperation. We
had pickled squash for almost 10 year afterwards (they kept fine!) and
all neightbours had their run. But I'm afraid we had to throw many
hundred kg still :-(
The problem was that everyone had such a big success that year. I
thought two of my giant squashes of 35 and 37 kg was big, but heard
later that the record was over 60 kg that season :-(
At the market place the price was down in 0.2 kr pr kg, so there was
little reason to go to the nearest market with it. Almost none of them
get rid of the production :-(
Darin McGrew
dara-...@starrtails.com (Dara) wrote:
> About how much room do they take up?
In our previous garden, we gave our bush-type squash 2 feet each along
the trellis, which seemed crowded, but tolerable. Don't expect it to
stay inside the 2' by 1' area though, and if you prune anything that
leaves that imaginary 2' by 1' box, you'll cut off most of its leaves.
It'll spread away from the trellis, shading the crop(s) in front of it,
and blocking the walkway (or whatever) behind it. And you might get
horizontal runners heading into the rest of the bed. ("What's this
butternut squash doing over here?")
In our new garden last year, our cucurbits caught a bad case of powdery
mildew, but until then they seemed to be behaving similarly. The lesson
I learned was that non-resistant varieties provide a staging area for
the infection of resistant varieties unless you're really vigilant about
destroying any sign of infection. They hadn't grown to a point where
they restricted the air circulation.
Actually, 3' by 3' isn't a bad estimate. With a trellis, you can get
away with putting the back 1' by 3' outside the bed, behind the trellis.
FWIW, we have three 3' by 6' beds, plus some perennial herbs and
ornamentals in containers.
Ellen
In article <35070081...@news.earthlink.net>,
dara-...@starrtails.com wrote:
> I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
> list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
> zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
> 9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
> vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
> anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
I have grown Ronde de Nice zucchini vertically. We drove a thick stake
into the ground and and suspended twine from hooks on a garage roof. It
still took up at least a 2 or 3 foot square, but much less than growing it
on the ground.
Bob Dehnhardt
In a vain attempt to be heard above the noise,
dara-...@starrtails.com (Dara) spake:
>I have been reading the Square Foot Gardening book, and the sq ft
>list, for that matter, and the only instructions I have read for
>zucchinis, yellow squash, etc. is to grow it on the ground, taking up
>9 sq ft per plant. Since melons, cucumbers, etc. can be grown on a
>vertical frame, can zucchinis and squashes be growing similarly? Has
>anyone ever tried this? Any ideas?
>
>Dara
Mel Bartholomew did an article in Organic Gardening about a year ago
(naturally I don't have it with me - I'll get the issue reference for
you tomorrow) that had ten "updates" to his Square Foot Gardening
method. One of them was to plant indeterminate (vine-type) zucchini
and other squash, and train them vertically, as you do for tomatoes. I
believe the spacing requirements were 1 square (12") per plant this
way, and the zuccs grew big and straight.
The article had a lot of good information in it. I'll find the
reference for you and upload is asap.
- Bob
Fremont, CA
Zone "Oh, c'mon, it =can't= be that late in the season already!"
Gofishgrl
That OG article is a good one!!
I've grown them using the pipe structure with poly netting threaded on it.
Worked great!
Bob Dehnhardt
And here it is: OG, February 1996 (okay, so it's =two= years ago).
Excellent article, definitely worth getting a back issue or checking
your local library. Here's the section on zucchini:
=====
3. Sky High Zucchini!
Yes, zucchini is a high-yeild crop all by itself - without any help
from us gardeners. But the sprawling plants can take up a lot of
valuable garden _space_ while producing those stupendous yields. So I
train my zucchini plants to grow up a pole - that way I can grow
=lots= of other veggies in all the space that the wildly sprawling
zucchini plants would have covered! As an added bonus, vertical
growing pushes the plants to produce even more (for those of you who
can't get enough) zucchini than it normally would - so you get more
zucchini per square foot as well as more square feet to garden in!
You only need 1 square foot to grow your up-lifted zucchini (talk
about improvement - I used to recommend giving each zucchini plant a 3
by 3 foot space to sprawl in; that makes this method =nine= times more
efficient!). Drive a wooden pole or metal fence post into the ground
inside your square foot, slightly off-center in the square. Then plant
one seed (or transplant) right in the middle of that square foot.
The plant will be bush-shaped when young, but starts vining as it
grows. When it starts to vine, lift up the end of the plant and tie it
to the stake. When the plant grows another foot longer, tie it again,
and continue to do so every 1 oe 2 feet thereafter. I've had zucchini
plants grow more than 6 feet tall when I train them up this way!
=====
- Bob