The plants I have started are: lettuce, tomato, carrots, green beans, kidney beans, peppers, and cantaloupe. I've never grown any of these things before, or much of anything before. If there any reason any of these shouldn't be planted near each other?
Also if anyone has any general tips for growing any of these I'd appreciate any advice I can get.
It is a very generic question, so it is difficult to fully answer it.
The rules are: try to avoid growing the same family of vegetable in the same place: This mean, when you finished with one vegetable, try to alternate the family. This will reduce diseases, and on large gardens, also stress of ground: one family tend to absorb the same kind of nutrients. On small gardens this is less a problem, because nutrients and roots moves few meters (and spading also help this).
There are many variation about which kind of vegetable should be keep near other kinds. This is due either to reduce diseases (in this case insects, because of smelling of the other one), or just one family create nutrients for other plants (fabaceae). Very seldom the inverse is true: one kind of vegetable will reduce harvesting of an other [but keep same family apart].
In your list, I usually put lettuce very near one of the other vegetables: I will harvest it before the other vegetables will grow a lot. In this manner I spare some place (and water).
On your list, I have also no preferences on what should be put more on sun, and what in shadows. But in next years, you can adapt, if you see that in your region some vegetables suffer too much sun and heat.
But my main recommendation: keep growing all stuffs for few years. It is normal that one (of few) kind of vegetables will produce less (or nearly zero). But next year things could be very different. Just after some years you can definitively say that one vegetable variety is not ideal for your garden (climate, soil, nutriments, water, ...).
Well Depending on which type of peppers you have started, I can say hotter varieties will partially cross with tomatoes or make cucumbers somewhat hot. Though Ive never had this happen to me, Ive heard about it many times.
I wouldn't worry about what you have planted too much, all though you did say you have melons growing. Melons stretch a long distance when growing. The vine and literally grab anything they can in order to pull themselves in a direction. I dont recommend having melons near other plants.
Do you have these plants potted or are you growing them from ground up?
