My neighbor insisted I should put shade cloth over my vegetable beds and I thought he was crazy

My neighbor Dave told me I needed shade cloth over my tomatoes and peppers because our yard gets like 10 hours of direct sun. I figured plants love sun so I ignored him and everything got sunburned and wilted within a week. Has anyone else had better luck with partial shade on hot south-facing beds?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_robin1mo ago

You figured plants love sun... yeah me too, I thought they were indestructible until my peppers looked like crispy bacon. I started putting up a 30% shade cloth around noon and it made a huge difference, kept things from getting fried without blocking all the good light.

spencer6641mo ago

Learned that lesson the hard way too @the_robin, my tomatoes looked like I grilled them instead of grew them. I had to build a little shade rig out of some old tomato cages and a bedsheet propped up on sticks, looked ridiculous but it worked. Funny how these plants are tougher than they look but one afternoon of direct sun turns them into salad topping.