For the last few weeks, we have been moving seedling trays out to the beds and placing them into the dirt. This year we are trying something a little different. Adding garden soil in with the beds and using shade cloth seems to be making a notable difference this year. Last year we ran into troubles starting late, using no shade cloth and having a minimal amount of dirt. But now I think with the additional resources added they should do much better this year.
I cut the shade cloth to size and pin it up on the fencing for some beds and for others I screw it into place. It would seem having it hang over a bit works better, these tomato plants are not as happy as the ones that are completely covered.
First I dig holes to put the garden soil in. I dig deep enough to place a small bed of dirt inside.
Then I place a few hand fulls of garden soil into the holes. This is much better than the native clay soil and woodchips/hay in the beds now. Giving them enough garden soil I hope their flourish.
Next go in the plants, here we have some Trinidad Scorpion pepper plants (very hot), chiplote peppers and naturium. Placing the vining plants close to the wiring and the non vining further out so they can grow in their own area and not be affected by the vining plants hopefully.
With the seedlings in the ground it will take some time for them to adjust.
Going with a over planting strategy in case some die.
The shade cloth comes in rolls, but I also bought some precut cloths. This will be pinned up once I cover up the garden soil with the native clay and dirt.
With the plants covered around their roots it would help hold in moisture. But I will still water them every day as they get quite hot.
Getting the shade cloth to stay on windy days has been a challenge. But I found if I roll a stick into the cloth and pin that it holds up much better.
I can pull it down whenever I need, but I tend to just water through the cloth and only take it down if I need to adjust or apply some pest killer stuff.
The fenced in area seems to be working well keeping out deer and such, with a eight foot tall fence not much can get over it.. maybe a black bear but thats about it.
The horse shoe beds have been filled with broccoli and cauliflower and cantaloupe.
Some lettuces are growing under this shade cloth. All of the cloth I use is 40%
We can see the tomato plants under this one are doing well. I think covering the sides helps with the extreme sun at the end of day when its no longer over head.
One of the beds has already grown so much we pulled down the shade cloth and will see how they handle it. The pea vines were trying to attach to the cloth instead of the fencing so maybe it was time to drop the cloth for them.
Besides getting chewed on some aphids these pea plants are doing well. I treated them using some insecticidal soap and seems to have done the trick.
The other side of the bed has some smaller pea plants and pepper seedlings growing, so I keep the cloth up on them for a few more weeks and take it down once they are big enough.
Its really nice seeing all my plants I grew late winter/early spring are doing well now in the ground. Feels like good progress is being made here.
Thanks much to @myjob for suggesting the use of shade cloth. It was not something I considered but now using it I am really thankful to have it.
you are welcome @solominer when we start new plants here in Fl this is a must to keep the sun from burning them. I do this when I start cutting, too.
I think I am going to be using this stuff a lot in the future, glad you shared that knowledge with me.. thank you
you are very welcome
This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.
Good morning dear friend @solominer
It will undoubtedly be a successful year, unlike last year you have made a lot of improvements, the half shade fabric has been an important addition, it will greatly protect the plants from the sun and wind
Great job. Many successes
I hope it works out better this year and indeed I think the shade cloth will help out alot.
Much appreciated.
Shade fabric makes sense to keep the soil moist, maintain water balance. According to some, it is possible to keep the soil moist with the help of straw. Thus, less water consumption is achieved. In addition, the vitamins and minerals in straw are very beneficial for plants.
Ah I am using hay as well, good to know it will help out with retaining moisture... thanks for the tip
Ah yes I saw the straws, I should be more careful :)
Dealing with aphids is annoying, have you tried putting tobacco in water for a few days and then spraying it? I’ve used this on tomato plants and it worked well.
Oh cool, that is worth a try. thanks for the suggestion. I have not tried it so maybe that would work.
Another tip that might help against the wind is to place fishing weights at some points to secure the fabric. This will also make it easier when you have to remove the fabric.
For pinning down the shade cloth I have been using little clips to hold them in place but I will give that a try if they do not work out.. thanks
I'll have to keep an eye out for some of that shade cloth. My raised bed is in pretty much full sun for the majority of the day. It probably puts a lot of stress on the plants. More than they need anyway. I didn't really do a garden this year, but if I ever do one again, I will keep that in mind.
Ah yeah it probably would help out, the young seedlings seem to need it the most.
I'll definitely have to look into it.
This is an interesting setup for the garden; everything is built properly. You do it alone or have some help because I think doing it alone may not be easy.
Thanks, its been quite the work in progress.
Yeah I have help, four of us live on the farm so we all work together.
Looking good!!!! nice start to the season!
Yeah it should be good :-)
Excellent idea, every time I go to Hive I find fabulous ideas for my garden. I will save your post because it is a very useful idea to protect plants from the weather.
I know exactly what you mean, so glad to get ideas from Hive as well.
It is a nice starting. Adding garden soil in the field is better because it contains nutritions and minerals. These nutrition and minerals helps plant for proper growth and development. And shade cloths are very useful. It helps to reduce high evaporation (from the free surface of soil) and also helps to reduce high transpiration (from the arial part of plant).Because of excessive transpiration plant can even die. Thank you for sharing.
Yeah I think its all coming along, using the garden soil should help I think as well.
Last year that is exactly what happened.. it got too hot too fast for the plants and most of them died. So having this shade cloth should help I think.
This is incredible, each time I read your post I learn something new. I don't know someone could plant like this and what does the shade protect the plant from
This is all new to me as well, first time using this shade cloth but I am really impressed by its results.. Hope it works well for you too if you have a garden to protect.
What a nice work, you started a nice work this new season and this idea is the best, wow, wow, wow, you are indeed a good gardener, I really love the digging point and I can see you have a very nutrition in the soil, nice one 👍👍👍👍
Thanks I am trying my best, I think they should do much better with the mentioned changes.
I googled it about this Trinidad peppers since I have never heard about it! I like spiced peppers, and I got curious about it! they are hotter than regular chili peppers?
Ah yeah they are very very spicy. I like making really spicy food so its good for me.
over a million scoville units.
#hive #posh
Ah, shadecloth does seem like a really good idea... hadn't thought of that possibility before. Might adopt that idea for some of our space, particularly when we get to July and August.
Yeah it seems to be helping a lot. Best of luck using it.
Wow... your garden is H-U-G-E!!!
Yep the fenced in area is about a third of an acre in size.
Congratulations @solominer! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next payout target is 122000 HP.
The unit is Hive Power equivalent because post and comment rewards can be split into HP and HBD
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP