Positioning of pumpkins plants

[Dandytown]

With little else to do due to the weather I am drawing up a master plan for my plot in 2011.

I am growing many types of pumpkin and would like to squeeze into each allocated sapce, two of each variety. 

Say for example my allotment runs from north to south and a given space for one variety of pumpkin is 2.5x7m.  I plant one pumpkin on the left side at the north end and the second one on the right side at the south end.  Can the second one be trained so that it stops paralell to base of  the first or will it turn southwards towards the sun?

Would It be better to simply plant them at the same end or would it get too crowded?

Thanks in anticipation for your comments.

[Dandytown]

[small]

I'm sure you'll get a proper expert on shortly, and I don't know about overall spacing because that depends on variety etc, but you can train them any way you want, one year I grew pumpkins in spirals and they seemed to do OK...I've never noticed a tendency to follow the sun.

[Dandytown]

Thanks small.  I do tend to garden on the side of give a plant its due space but the moresquash varieties I come across the greedier I get and am trying to grow as many as spacing will allow.  I have found that where one plant fails a back-up would be good so its two of each this year.

[Squash64]

Have you thought of growing some of them up canes?  I grew these Tromba up 8ft canes and they did really well.

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[Dandytown]

Thanks Betty.  Glad you posted the pics as I hope to grow Tromba myself along with Loofah and Rolet (aka. banana squash). 

My brassica frame was destroyed bt the snow so I will put up some scaffold framework for these three at the bottom of my plot.  If interested see: http://myplot38.blogspot.com/

[pigeonseed]

Yes I was going to say that - I grow mine up wigwams like beans. But I have used an old clothes horse and stuff like that in the past. I'd say it's a waste to let them roam all over the ground, taking up room which other plants could use.

You might even get a spot of underplanting out of it if you're cheeky like some radish or coriander or something!

[Dandytown]

Can pretty much any squash plant that is either not a bush variety or does not produce an exceptionally large fruit, be trained up a support does it depend on the variety?

[kt.]

Train them to go up and down between rows of sweetcorn.  Saves space and is a good weed suppressant too.  I ain't done it myself yet but will be next year.  I usually do the spiral method but need more space........ so intercropping is the way ahead.