Planting: Summer Squash and Watermelons

The days are growing warmer and the nights are staying well above freezing so the time has come to plant some of my warmer weather crops.  Today's focus was the summer squash and watermelon beds.  These beds are at the end of the garden because I expect these crops to grow long vines and fill in the space at the end of the yard.

 I put the summer squash in the second to last bed since most of these crops are a bush variety that shouldn't get too long, but still need a lot of room for their giant leaves.  I planted three varieties:  Black Beauty Zucchini, Yellow Straightneck squash and Patisson Gold Marbre Scallop.  This will be the first year that I have grown scallop squash and this variety can be eaten young like a summer squash or allowed to mature more fully to be eaten like a winter squash.  Each variety was planted in two "hills" next to each other with about three feet of spacing between the hills.  I laid down the irrigation with loops to go around each hill to ensure that each one would get plenty of water.  Each hill holds three or four seeds and will be thinned to the strongest in each grouping after they grow the first set of true leaves.

Once I confirmed that the irrigation was watering properly I mulched in the bed with a thick layer of grass clippings.  I pulled back some of the mulch that was right over the hills because I wanted to make sure that the newly planted seeds got enough warmth and light to germinate.

This area was engulfed by ragweed last year, so I am hoping that the thick mulch keeps weeding this bed more manageable.   This area was also where the meat chickens spent half of the summer last year depositing manure, so the bed should have plenty of nutrients to feed the hungry squash plants.

In the last bed I planted my main crop of watermelons.  I only had six seeds from a watermelon that I had last summer, so each seed got it's own hill.  Hopefully they all germinate for me.  I expect that they will take some time to really fill out their bed so I planted a row of carrots down each side of the watermelons.  I plan to harvest these carrots in the fall after the first frost kills off the watermelons so I don't need to worry about digging them out when the plants are producing their juicy summer fruit.

I made rings around each watermelon seed like I did with the squash.  These crops can be very thirsty in the heat of the summer, so I want to be sure they are well irrigated.  Each row of carrots also got it's own drip line.  In this case I laid the line first, then sowed the seed on the surface of the soil next to the line.  All of the plantings were covered lightly with a small amount of grass mulch, then the gaps were filled in with a thick layer of clippings, again in the hopes of reducing weed pressure in this bed.

I will be checking the beds every few days to look for signs of germination.  Once things get established will be adding mulch as needed to keep out the weeds.