Cantaloupe EVERYWHERE!

[enginerd]

We started all of our garden plants in peat pots indoors. Set them out a couple of weeks ago and added a scoop of compost to the bottom of each hole. It has been really rainy so I didn't go out to check on them much until today - around every plant is a bunch of little green shoots coming through the dirt. Almost pulled them thinking they were weeds until I realized they were around every single one. Then I remembered the cantaloupe I threw into the compost bin several weeks ago. Now I have cantaloupe plants in my tomatoes, in my okra, in my pumpkins and in my squash. I am thinking about letting some of them grow. Will this interfere with my other plants in any way?

[TiggerToo]

The only thing I would be afraid of is if the cantaloupe is viney...if it is it could start to "latch" onto your other plants and could pose a problem. But I am definitely not speaking from experience. I just know that some of my plants (the squash variety) have been quite viney and I have had to snip some of the little "feelers" that it sends out and that latch onto some of my other stand up plants.

ETA: You could always transplant some of them to another area of your garden...where there is more room to grow....

[Gardencook]

Folklore used to claim that melons, cucumbers and squash would cross-pollinate, but the last few years experts have been saying that isn't the case. Armenian cucumbers will cross-pollinate with melons, because they aren't true cucumbers, but melons and squash won't cross.
Usually my best summer squash come from volunteers from the compost bin and I never know where they are going to pop up, so let a lot of them choose their own location.
Squash will cross with other squash, but sometimes that can create some interesting hybrids. I had volunteers summer squash show up one year that were half yellow and half green. It looked like someone had taken a paint brush to them. The line around the middle was so exact. However, they were still quite tasty and didn't turn into gourds, because they were both summer squash.
Our climate is too cold for melons here, but last year I planted spaghetti squash at the foot of my tomato plants and we got some of our best tomatoes and squash ever. We have a brick house and the spot with the best sun gets too hot in the afternoon. The squash kept the soil moist and the tomatoes loved the heat. It was a perfect combination.
As TiggerToo mentioned, I did have to pull the vines off the tomatoes occasionally to keep them from choking the tomatoes, but as long as I kept an eye on them, the squash vines could be trained to stay down where they belonged.

[Jomurphey]

I teepee my beans and plant my cantaloupes and honeydews under them. Double duty planting and it keeps the weeds down.

[motherofmolly]

my dh's grandpa's girlfriend told me to take my seeds and save them. then next year scatter them near our pond and along the sides of my yard where the woods start. let the viney plants (cantelope, melon, pumpkins) grown crazy there.

[Jomurphey]

I actually had a dog plant mine...he loved eating watermelon. LOL Of course he did his business by the fence line (never trained him to do that he just did) so I had automatic planting, fertilizing, and weed control around the boundary of my property.

[TiggerToo]

I actually had a dog plant mine...he loved eating watermelon. LOL Of course he did his business by the fence line (never trained him to do that he just did) so I had automatic planting, fertilizing, and weed control around the boundary of my property.