Can you plant melons next to cukes?

I was reading about melons in the a book about companion planting and it said that vines can wilt due to a Bacteria spread by cucumber beetles and there is no cure. Are those beetles called cucumber beetles because they can be found around cucumbers? I remember one summer planting my melons by cucumbers and the melons looked and tasted like they had crossed with each other. What do you say? If I plant them next to each other will they cross? I'd like both to grow up my fence to save room. At least the cantaloups.

As long as you are growing cucumbers and not Armenian cucumbers which are actually melons, crossing is not a problem. In general tho, I have found cukes to be more disease prone than cantaloupes. They also are much faster to usable stage. For those reasons I don't like to plant them, where they intermingle.

Some of the exotic melons will not be as sweet when planted next to cucumbers, like the oriental melons (Silver Line Korean melon for instance).

I am reviving an old, old thread here, but I couldn't find an answer to my question:

How far apart should one plant squashes, cucumbers, and melons (incl. Armenian cucumbers) to avoid cross-pollination?

thanks for your help,
C.

More than 1/4 mile.

Here's a nice site, "Pollination of Vine Crops" - a little technical, but pretty interesting:
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/87-043.htm

Table 1 on page 5 shows related groups of vegetables.

Figure 2 on page 8 shows how each group will or won't cross-pollinate.



This message was edited Jun 1, 2008 6:51 PM

This message was edited Jun 1, 2008 6:52 PM

This message was edited Jun 1, 2008 6:52 PM

Thank you both, Farmerdill and CompostR. I think for a normal home vegetable garden, 1/4 mile separation is a bit too much. That site from Ontario is really geared towards market production, but the info was good. (We have a bee hive!)

Last year I had good success having a regular cucumber grow up on a fence, so this year I thought I'll have one of each, one regular and one Armenian, and they are right close to each other. So one of them (which one?) will go.

Perhaps my neighbor might do that one and I'll do the other and we will have to share

Thanks again,
C.

Armenian and regular cukes don't cross, so as long you are not growing cantaloupes , you should be alright. Unless you are isolated, bagging and hand pollinating all members of the cucurbit groups is a good idea when comptemplating seed saving. One or two fruits of each cultivar is all you need. Bees travel pretty good distances between visits to the nest or hive. If you are not saving seeds, no need to worry about it. Diseases are a greater problem if one has a much longer season than the other. Plants are more susceptible to disease as they age, and the aging plant can incubate diseases for a younger vigorous plant.

Oh, Farmerdill, I guess I did not understand it correctly. We are not growing cantaloupes. So, I can grow regular and Armenian close together. And I won't want to save seeds.

Thanks for clearing this up for me. And I understand what you are telling me about the disease problem.

Wishing you good growing, Clementine

Ok I'm going to show my ignorance. What is a Armenian Cucumber? I have my pickling cucumber next the our wire fence to grow up. I have cantaloupes and watermelons to plant too. I have a very large round bed, that our above grounds swimming pool use to be in that I would like to plant at least one of my melons in and maybe anything else that would grow well with them. I have sweet corn, beets and bush beans to plant also. One year I planted a root crop, I think carrots and beets in with the melons because the melons only need so much space for the actual plant and the rest is vine. It sounds like I need to move my Cantaloupes away from my pickling cucumbers. I will go look at the link provided by CompostR to see what that says.

Armenian Cucumber http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MV056
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=melo+var.+flexuosus&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

I have Tetsukabuto winter squash vines running all over the place but I just read that they need a cross-pollinator. Since I did not plant any other squash does this mean that I am not going to get any squash from all this vegetation? I wish the seed supplier would have mentioned this.

Tetsukabuto is a modified hybrid ( intespecies cross). It is sort of like the seedless watermelon in that it is sterile. It is the only interspecies cross available in North America, the process is patented but Sakata has several others in the works. Either plant a quick maturing squash or hope someone else is growing squash within a quarter mile. I am not sure whether the pollenizer needs to be a C. maxima or a C.moschata

Thanks Farmerdill!