Thanks for the comment, and it’s great you are interested in growing fruits and vegetables, and these are good questions.

As long as you do not intend to save your own seeds for regrowing, you can plant anything next to each other you want. You can never significantly change a plant by growing it near another one.

Sometimes plants can give each other diseases, like you should never grow potatoes next to tomatoes, but this is a little complicated and too much to explain here.

In any case, you never have to worry about growing plants next to each other if they are the same kind. For example you can grow as many tomatoes next to each other as you want, or as many melons next to each other as you want.

If you are going to save your own seeds to replant, it can get a little complicated. Sometimes plants cross pollinate with each other, and when this happens normally it’s a bad thing and the seeds are not good for replanting.

Tomatoes are very easy to save seeds for regrowing. They do not normally cross pollinate with nearby plants, so you can grow different tomatoes next to each other and still save seeds. You can only save seeds from heirloom or ‘open pollinated’ (or OP) plants! If you are not sure about this, the plant is probably not suitable for saving seeds.

To save seeds from a tomato you can just take the seeds from a tomato that is allowed to get fully ripe on the plant and spread them out on a paper towel or coffee filter to dry. If you want to go to a little more trouble, you can also ferment the seeds and I made a post about this here:

http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=7

For melons it’s a lot more complicated. cantaloupe and honeydew will certainly cross with each other, but watermelon is something different. You can tell this by looking at the Latin names of these plants, which is sometimes printed on the packet of seeds. Watermelon is Citrullus lanatus and cantaloupe and honeydew are Cucumis melo. Again this can get a little bit complicated, but normally plants with the same Latin name will cross pollinate with each other, and those with different Latin names will not. There are some exceptions however.

Good beginners plants for saving seeds from are peas, beans, tomatoes and lettuce. As long as you grow heirloom or OP varieties, you can just save seeds from these plants, because they don’t normally cross pollinate much.

If you want to read more, have a look at this post:

http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=237

If you’re ready to read even more, have a look at this:

http://www.seedambassadors.org/wp/?p=359

Please come back and ask more questions! Growing your own vegetables and saving your own seeds can be a lot of fun, and I’d love to help you out if I can.

Thanks for the comment!

I know the problem well of not knowing if a plant is really heirloom!

As far as seeds go, on the front page of this blog http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog there are some seed companies listed, and they only sell heirloom seeds. These companies are mostly for fruit and vegetable seeds, but they have a few other plants. The Seed Savers Exchange, is also a great resource for heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds.

Most members of the Seed Savers Exchange also have private collections not listed in the catalog. If you become a member, and get to know a few of these people, they may be able to help put you in touch with others that have the kinds of plants you are looking for in their own garden. When you become a member, they will send you a list of phone numbers of other members in your area. Just pick up the phone and give these people a call.

Otherwise, the best thing to do is look for nurseries that specialize in heirloom varieties and don’t sell anything else. I suspect you knew this already…

I hope this helps, but anyway all the best wishes for your business and your hunt for plants!

I am very excited to find this wonderful article. It really hits home, and it’s a shame that more people aren’t aware of the tactics employed by these large food and seed companies. I am a huge supporter of “heirloom” varieties, and would love to know of any places that are selling them. For the past 2 years I have been trying to start a small plant business. The biggest obstacle I have encountered has been finding plants that I know ‘for certain’ are not protected. Let me tell you, this is no small task, I spend hour upon hour online and on the phone trying to find out a plants “legal status”. A lot of the nurseries that are more than happy to sell me a plant, become somewhat beligerant when I mention that I want to reproduce what I’m looking to buy, and need to know if its “protected”. It is VERY frustrating. I want to thank you for bringing this issue to light, hopefully more people will become interested in preserving what is left of our heirloom varieties, so maybe our great-great granchildren will be able to enjoy them.
Kind Regards, Johanna