RE: Those Tempting Horrible Seed Catalogs
Looks like you really plan your garden out. I just stick the seeds into the ground in some sort of line, spaced out according to the package. I live in Florida so it's little a hard to grow stuff :P Tomatoes and green peppers will grow but I've never got a butternut squash or watermelon to produce. Can't blame them though with the temperatures outside :D
Don't know if you do Discord or not, but if you do checkout @steemithomestead at https://discord.gg/VKCrWsS. Haven't used it myself since I'm not a homesteader (more of a techno geek myself) but I've heard some good things about it.
The Steemit Creators' Guild (https://discord.gg/YDcyTJR) is also a great place to meet new people and form some connections. Love to see you poke your head in sometime ;)
If you can grow corn, put your squash in amongst the corn. It gets messy to walk in but the corn will shade the squash and the squash keeps out the critters from pulling down the corn. It also works with pole beans. They use the corn to grow upwards. Again messy but effective. That growing pattern is called The Three Sisters - here's a link to info on it if you are interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
Thank you @carn. I am on discord and will check out @steemithomestead and the Creators Guild also.
I would not have thought that you could not grow stuff like we do, in Florida. Here we have very short summers so we too are limited but I understand about the heat. I once sent some rhubarb plants to California, where it was not normally grown, but she put them in a partially shaded area and the plants are still producing.