Located in Mesa,AZ. Zone 9b/10a
Fun Sunday project over all, and a beautiful 75° day! Used 6 T Posts, “UV Resistant” 550 Paracord, a big roll of 50% Shade Cloth from Amazon, plastic shade cloth grommets, and cheap stainless steel carabiners. Learned a lot and will make some improvements next weekend. Hoping to extend our tomato/pepper season a bit. Any input is welcome!
Had to drink an ice cold beer and stare at it after of course. Then devoured an Early Girl tomato I harvested yesterday. Cheers!
by coltonovitch
7 Comments
At first I was thought why? Then I noticed where you’re at. My tomatoes do fine in 9a/9b but my peppers have a rough time.
I got my shade cloth at Home Depot. It’s still in good shape after 4 years of 105*-110*.
https://preview.redd.it/wb5akmor8hxe1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=526057fea74bc7cebe922bfcdeadd8617169cbad
That looks awesome! I’m over in Chandler and my peppers are already starting to droop in this heat, so a shade setup like yours is super tempting. Does the 50% shade seem to cut the sun enough without being too much?
Thank you suredly_unassured And I thank you too coltonovitch ! The shade cloth holds up pretty well. But the big problem I’ve had is the wind. We get 40-50 mph winds every few months for a week or two. The cloth billows like crazy but could handle it but the wind practically pulled the posts right out of the ground. And they are attached to concrete bases. So this year I’m attaching them differently so I can move the cloth to one side when the winds pick up. And I’ve built gabion cages around each post to make them more secure and now I’m going in a whole new direction … au-natural shade structures. I’m getting Mother Nature to help me a bit. Your garden looks great. Happy gardening.
Looks great!
I’m in 9B also but over in southeast Tx. It isn’t quite hot enough here to need shade cloth yet but it will be soon (Mid May is the usual time).
I need to redo some of the structural elements before then. Some storms last year (not even tropical storms, just a normal rainstorm with 40mph plus hour winds) bent the U posts clean over and I had to bend them back and redneckengineer 4×4 braces. I bought T posts to replace them, but need to install them.
Meant to do that today but got distracted smoking ribs. I regret nothing.
Lol! Up in PNW, we never have to worry about so much sun and heat. Though we still do tomatoes and peppers, some citrus, other stuff
And a Gallo to top it all off…nice!