When I put the original veggie patch cover over our south veggie patch about 7 years ago, the 50mm polyethylene irrigation pipe stood proudly up at 90° to the ground and the whole patch was pretty well covered. Unfortunately the intervening years have been getting hotter and the pipe has developed a distinct lean towards the north. Initially this did not seem to be a huge problem, just increasing the protection over the northerly beds, but the ridiculous temperatures we have been seeing of late have been resulting in issues.
With the move towards the north, the shade cloth has been pulled away from the southern fence, resulting in a patch (less than a metre wide to be fair) that the afternoon sun has access to, and it is really taking a toll on the plants in that area of the patches. There is some overlap of the shade cloth towards the south, but because it hangs straight down, it provides no protection for the area in question.
To sort this problem out I have had to develop a fix to cover the area full time, by securing the overlap of shade cloth to the fence. This is how I did it –
1. The fence is Colourbond and has a flat top, but rather than hassle about connecting stuff directly to it, I screwed some waste timber (70mm x 18mm x 1850mm long) to the top of the fence as a base.
2 to the base I screwed 6 cleats or, as they were labelled on the packet, zinc plated lashing hooks, onto the base board with the open end facing away from the veggie patch. Just an aside, while screwing in one of the two screws to hold one of them down, the head sheared off! So I guess they are not stellar quality.
3. There was some tension cause by the loops of irrigation pipe leaning away from the fence, so I enlisted the help of my brother to push them back up, bringing the free end of the shade cloth closer to the fence and reducing the tension I had to work with while securing it to the fence.
4. I got hold of some butterfly clips (an accessory for securing shade cloth) which fold over the edge of the shade cloth and allow you to attach some rope to the shade cloth. I thought they would be easy to use, but needed to apply pressure with a pair of multigrips to get them to close properly.
5. I knotted the rope on one end then secured it to the shade cloth with a butterfly clip, looped it around the end cleat and pulled it taut, then further along did the same thing until the open end of the shade cloth was secured to the fence, along where the timber was screwed on.
6. This secured things pretty well and closed up, for the most part, that gap in our defences against the western Sydney sun. To improve the security of things my brother suggested throwing a loop of rope around the middle shade cloth support, wrapping around the taking it back to the fence a time or two to secure. That’s what we did and it worked well.
The shade cloth veggie cover is now very well secured in the event of strong winds or hail and gives us better coverage against the sun. The shades have been in place so long I forgot how devastating the sun can be on a western Sydney afternoon, but now are defences are up to scratch again!
Two zucchini plants, planted on the same day, these photos were taken on the same day several months later. The top one has no protection, the bottom one was planted under the shade cloth.
