GardenZeus Tips for Shading Vegetables During Hot Weather

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To extend your harvest and avoid bolting, stressed plants, and/or reduced yields from vegetables during hot weather, you may wish to install shadecloth over your plants to protect them during afternoon heat, or be creative in finding mobile and temporary ways to provide shade, such as with trellises, taller nearby plants in mobile pots, clotheslines, outdoor furniture or canopies, improvised screens, or palm fronds. Consider constructing mobile screens, frames, or lightweight cages made of wire with shadecloth, screening, or old sheets. These can be bent over beds to form tunnels or bent at angles to provide custom areas of shade. Varied densities of cloth or screening materials can be used to provide custom levels of brightness and shade.

Providing afternoon summer shade by planting vegetables to the east or northeast of permanent features such as immobile trellises, arbors, or shrubs should be done carefully, after observation or with an understanding of how sun and shade patterns shift throughout the year to avoid providing too much shade or losing afternoon shade during hot weather due to shifting sun patterns.

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