What to to grow on a trellis?

[1voyager1]

Update:
Simplify your life, plant a vegetable garden, save on your food costs.

As I was planting the seeds for my kabocha - musk melon - watermelon patch, along comes Tubby, our special needs lap cat.
He is delighted as he wanders around the raised bed smelling and looking around at everything.
I can see it allover his face: Oh boy, a new cat latrine.
So, I begin plotting on how to keep cats out of the new garden area.

A day or two later, after finding that something has been eating some of my seeds, I covered the bed with some bird netting I had bought a few years earlier, should keep the birds and cats out.
The next morning I find the netting all tore up with bird feathers scattered around the bed.
Apparently, the birds get in anyway and the cats have a field day chasing the bird inside the netting tearing it up in the process.
So, I pullout some hardware cloth I had bought to make a cage to move cats in for the evacuation, but never used, and begin making a fence around the bed.
And, I buy some more seed for just in case.
And, one of the cats brought a dead rat home that night.
I'm now thinking that I need to protect it from cats, rats and birds.

I didn't finish the fence that day.
Went out to finish it the next morning and I find more bird feathers around the bed.
Maybe the cats are protecting my squash garden.
I'm finding empty kabocha, watermelon and musk melon hulls laying on the ground with no seedlings showing, ... birds and/or rats?

I began looking at motion activated water sprinklers to keep birds, rats and cats out of the garden.
Found a nice one for about $70 that just might do the job.

Finally this afternoon, I see seedlings sprouting out of the ground.
Maybe some of the seed will survive.
I am beginning to wonder just where this is going to end up.

[kalianna]

As I'm sprouting seeds in the garden I cover it with cattle fencing just by laying it on top of the rocks that form the beds. That keeps my neighbor's chickens from scratching up the seeds and eating them. I also hang old dvd disks from tomato cages and that scares the local birds away. Once the seeds sprout the birds lose interest and then I place rocks strategically around the plants to keep the cats from using it as a litter box. Hope that helps.

[ElysianWort]

I do my seedlings in a separate area from the garden. A little wire cage surrounding a planting tray and inside the tray lots of little labeled planting cups. After the seedlings grow a few inches then they are ready for transplant and that skips the issue of birds or rats eating the seeds.

As Kaliana said, some rocks surrounding the seedlings solves the issue of the cats digging up the seedlings when using the freshly tilled garden as a new "latrine". Me sitting in a lawn-chair overlooking the garden with a water-hose is another method to give the cats a message. -But you know cats... they do what they want.

Growing melons will present you with a different problem as the fruit mature. The kabocha squash is exempt from this problem because the skin is so thick but as for the others you listed, there is a large fruit-fly that stings them and lays eggs in the melons. A way around that problem is to "bag" your fruit. I've seen cheese cloth, I've seen paper bags, I even once saw someone wrap their cucumbers in newspaper.

Good luck and happy gardening 1v1 []

[1voyager1]

The raised bed plot is doing quite nicely.
I seemed to have panicked when seeing the seeds being dug up.
I did lose a few, but more than enough are growing and developing.
The cucumbers, begun from HD seedlings, have reached the trellis and have begun to produce female flowers.
Will I need to hand pollinate, or will the local critters take care of that for me?
We do get some honey bees, but not many.

The kabocha are big, strong and look to be healthy, still got a long ways to go before reaching the trellis, though.
Watermelon and musk melon are developing more slowly, but look OK.

EDIT:
The cats seem to have lost interest in the plot.
At first it looked good.
Now it isn't as easy to dig in.
I have only found one cat bomb in the bed.
That was a while ago.

[kalianna]

Glad all is going well. i don't fertilize my cukes and get plenty--that is ,when it rains. Went out today and my lemon cukes were fried. :-(

[1voyager1]

Cukes seem to be OK.
Some female flowers are fading and their ovaries are growing, good sign.
I had understood that they put out male flowers to begin with, then female flowers.
They are now producing both male and female flowers.
Fertilization will not be a problem.

I understand that the watermelons will need to be supported while on a trellis.
Using sections of nylons is a recommended method.
May have to send M'Lady to buy me some for the garden.
Might be able to adapt them, maybe, to protect the others if fruit flies become a problem.