Keeping your garden COOL in Arizona 05.31

Whoofta... we are experiencing some hot days here in AZ. By mid May I was noticing that all the plants in my garden were stressing out.

So I did a little research and stumbled upon an article from last year about "Helping tomato plants survive".

One of the recommendations was Shade... now who would've thought, shade in the summer? Well as it seems like a no brainer to most everyone who lives in the middle of the desert, I had then realized that the garden was getting over 5-6 hours of direct sunlight during the day and the last two hours were in the middle of the day around 1-2pm. OUCH! I was noticing some sun scalding on some of the leaves so I had to do something fast. And knowing that it isn't going to get any cooler, and that sun is going to get more intense as summer goes along, I decided to come up with a plan to protect my babies.

1. Need a shade cloth for the canopy of 50 to 70 percent shade.
2. Brainstormed with my husband (with whom is an Technical Engineer) on what we should make the frame out of. Wood... PVC... there were pros and cons to both. We initially decided to go with PVC.
3. Drew up the specs.
4. Then ventured off to Home Depot for the supplies.
   

As we were wondering around looking for materials we found three metal trellises that just happened to be the same width as the garden. Sweet! A lot less expensive and work than constructing something out of PVC.

Here are the results....

We cemented in the two trellises on the sides and used some string for support. Works great and the members of the garden couldn't be happier.

I would like to thank both my husband and my mom for assisting in this daunting task in putting this together... it was a bit of work, but very happy with the results in the end! Ya!

Till next log!
Michelle