Raised bed sun protection

[RBalboa]

Hi all! New to forum, and have done a cursory search for topics regarding sun protection (protecting vegetable plants in raised bed from scorching sun), but did not see any obvious threads - so, my apologies if this is a redundant post!

(Brief intro). I live in San Diego, CA & have 4 raised beds. Hardiness zone 10a/b. They have full sun exposure. This is my first year with the raised beds, and I do plan on vegetable gardening (tomatoes, peppers, carrots, root vegetables, cucumber, squash, etc). Tomatoes started from seed 1/1/2017, in the raised beds 3/1/2017, and already have red fruit (albeit early girl variety).

I can already anticipate that the direct San Diego sun will be causing major issues with my plants, come summer especially. I want to know if there are any recommended methods to create protection from sun? Sun shades/netting? What type of support do I use? Pictures would be super helpful. And I'd be happy to attach pics of the raised beds if that would be helpful. And let me know if I can provide any further info. (Tomatoes are a mix of determinate & indeterminate varieties.)

-RBalboa

[rainbowgardener]

One of the nice thing about growing in beds like that is that it is very easy to provide whatever kind of protection you need. Currently mine are all fenced in to keep the dogs from digging them up. But I'm about to throw deer netting over the fence around the strawberry bed, to keep birds from the berries.

You can get hoops for raised beds in a variety of sizes:



For smallish plants I have used the wire frames that political yard signs come on, which have the advantage of being free, if there's an election coming up!

So once you have some kind of fence around your bed or frame or hoops, then you can cover it with whatever you want - clear plastic for winter, netting, floating row cover to keep insects off, shade cloth, etc.

Or you can get a shade curtain and just provide shade from one side, to protect from the hot afternoon sun. Shade cloth and shade curtains come in a variety of densities of what percent of the sun they block.

https://www.growerssupply.com/farm/supp ... rtain.html

[RBalboa]

Rainbow Gardener, Thank you so much for your thoughtful & detailed response! Your raised beds look great & I love the look of your garden hoops (did you make it with PVC pipe?!) I was considering getting the High-Rise Super Hoops from Gardeners Supply Co (https://www.gardeners.com/buy/super-hoops/39-392RS.html), but figured there would be other options as well. I'm grateful to learn that with a little ingenuity, I can put something together. Thanks again for all the info.

[rainbowgardener]

Sorry that's just a picture I found.

Here's a picture of some of my raised beds:



you can click on picture to enlarge it. (That was three weeks ago, those beds are much fuller now).

Some of them are fenced with wire rabbit fencing and some with deer netting.

The fencing is just attached to step-in metal fence stakes, which are cheap at home stores. Some have tall stakes and some short, but the short would be better for attaching shade cloth or whatever to... You might need six per bed for supporting row cover or shade cloth, but you can just step the stakes in and put the cover over. You can use earth staples to hold the row cover or whatever down so it doesn't blow away.

stakes

[imafan26]

If you select heat resistant plants they don't need as much protection. Early Girl will produce until the mid 80's then it will stop, or the blossoms will drop but it picks up again if it gets cooler. The Florida cultivars do better in 90 degree weather. Heat master, sunchaser, Heatwave II, Arkansaw Traveler, Sioux, and Super Sioux, Creole, and the cherry tomatoes do better at the higher temps. Watering will need to be increased unless you have the tomatoes in a SIP. I usually don't have to shade my tomatoes but I only get to about 91 degrees at my elevation. I plant my tomatoes behind the main garden bed and usually I have corn in summer that is taller than the tomatoes so the bottom of the tomatoes stay in the shade and only the top actually gets any sun. For the plants that don't like full sun in summer, I move to pots to the front yard where they will get afternoon shade. I also have 47% shadecloth which I can put over a PVC frame for orchids that need more protection. You can also get 35% shade cloth if you want more light to come through. Cucumbers and squash don't seem to have a problem in the sun, but I only try to grow beets in summer, not carrots . If you do want to try carrots Nelson was the sweetest and most heat tolerant. The seeds came from Johnnys. Hot peppers and the cubanelle and long sweet peppers do better for me than bells.
Try some of the tropical veggies like NZ hot weather spinach, sweet potatoes, eggplang, long beans, sweet corn, vegetable amaranth (use it like spinach), some of the asian greens will tolerate heat with some cover, swiss chard, squash, melons, and okra. They are much more heat tolerant than temperate varieties.
Many of the herbs won't mind the heat.

[Gary350]

Some plants do better in the hot sun than others. My tomatoes and bell peppers do good in full sun until temperature gets above 90. I live in TN July and Aug it will be about 100 degrees every day for 2 months my tomatoes and pepper do much better if I plant them so they get full sun in the morning when it is cool then full shade after lunch when it is hot until dark. When I lived in Phoenix full sun is different than full sun in TN there are no clouds in AZ and often 30% to 50% clouds in TN. I put a lean too black tarp canopy on my AZ plants so they got full sun before lunch and full shade after lunch until dark but 115 degrees was just to hot for the tomatoes. AZ bell peppers need shade too after lunch. My squash does good until it gets hot and often dies so I replant with seeds about every 3 weeks all summer to keep new plants coming up all the time as other plants die. Carrots are a cold weather crop I use to plant them, they get hard as wood in Hot weather but don't worry let them grow until winter they get soft, tender, sweet in cold weather and the tops are very very good on salad. Best garden I ever grew was planted last week of November when I lived in Arizona they only get 3 weeks of cold weather at the end of February. I have no clue what your weather conditions are, I hope this information is helpful.