Saturday, March 30, 2013

Working with what nature gives you, my issues :)

 One part of being eco-friendly is learning how to work with what mother nature has given you. In my case, mother nature has given me a lot of sun for several months of the year. So much sun in fact that growing vegetables for my own use has become very tricky in the hotter month's of summer. This year I have decided to try and set up a shade structure!

One other consideration is that in my area mother nature has also given us random hurricanes, so anything I put up either needs to be able to withstand a storm or needs to come down quickly.

After much research, I have decided that this year I am going to build a shaped cage using PVC pipe and fittings as well as some shade cloth that I used to use over a poultry pen. The plan is to make what basically looks like a giant box kite on its side, sew the edges of the shade cloth over the pipes, and use wire to wire the pipes to existing cement blocks holding up the garden Pallets. the total cost of the structure not including if I had to buy shade cloth again looks to run about $75. We will soon see if this is successful in keeping my pepper plants from burning up in the hot Florida sun!