Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Shady places

Continuing the theme of accumulative work, there's a relatively new project we've been working on lately. It does involve a retaining wall, but not building one! Thankfully. It's the retaining wall, below our hugelkultur beds.

During the warmer months, those blocks, heat up something terrible. Hardly anything grows in the beds. While the avocado tree sprouted near the wall, is helping reduce SOME radiant heat from reaching the blocks - it's certainly not enough to cover the span of wall, during the day.


Avocado (left) shade sail (above)


So we installed some treated timber posts, and a single, 3.4 x 3.4 metre, shade sail. During sumer, when the sun is high, it will shade approximately 3 metres of wall. But it will always creep in, on the east and west side, as the sun rises and sets.

To mitigate this, we're building screens on half the sides. You can see the lattice, installed recently. It was a gift originally, and I was tired of storing, instead of using. While it's not entirely big enough, I intend to add some mesh above it, with a pot underneath, to grow climbers over. That should provide better shade cover. I will do something similar on the west-facing side.

While it looks kinda junky right now, everything in the image above, has a purpose. The styrafoam boxes under the lattice, are shading a couple of pots I have potatoes and jerusalem artichokes, growing in. The plastic pot, on the styrafoam box, has a rock in it, to stop the box from blowing away. The white buckets in the middle, catches the rain which drops from the shade cloth. I then ferry that water, to the hugelkultur beds.


Best pepinos I've ever grown, over the retaining wall ~
now receives morning shade from the sail


The goal here is to create more micro-climate, for growing plants. Mostly edible ones. Also, to use the man-made infrastructure, as a means of capturing energy where I need it (ie: water harvesting) or deflect energy where I don't - radiant heat.

It's another work in progress, as funds and time become available. I intend to use more recycled materials to complete this shady area. In the meantime, we make do with boxes, buckets and other bits and pieces we can find. It's kind of ugly, but progressing us towards meeting our goal of more food production. Which is kind of great!



8 comments:

  1. Chris you have been very busy. When we bought our 1/4 acre block, it had been a rental for 10 years. There was sparse grass and that was it. The first summer here we baked. Since then we have planted and potted up, introduced more verandas and shade structures. We have a way to go but the property is now much more people friendly.

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    1. We had a similar experience Jane, in our first year living here. Not much tree cover and minimal grass. We baked too. It's so much nicer as you can develop more shade (and plant life) to reduce sources of radiant heat.

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  2. Chris, I was just looking at the pepino bush earlier and it is going crazy. I am trying to keep it from spreading though which is a challenge. I hadn't seen the fruit on it until I took a closer look.

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    1. I've not had a problem with pepino spreading in our garden, but it sounds like you've got quite the mini food-forest growing in yours. It sure might run in those conditions. If you ever get an oversupply, feed them to your chooks. We give the ones, infested with fruit fly to ours.

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  3. Chris, I doubt that I can grow pepinos here in the tropics, they sound very interesting. I love your approach of using what you have available to create your microclimate. Pauline

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    1. Pepinos love the heat, like tomatoes - but are susceptible to fungal problems, like tomatoes as well. So they may not do well in the tropics, during the hot, wet, growing season. Although, in the right micro-climate, I suspect they might surprise you. :)

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  4. That is an excellent idea to use the shade cloth! I find that even my lumber raised beds get hot in the summer and tend to dry out all too quickly. Very discouraging, because they do help slow down our wiregrass problem. Your solution should get good results.

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    1. I'm hoping the shade cloth makes a difference too. It seems to be, already. Fully exposed raised beds, can sure bake in the sun - even with hugelkultur ones. Any way to throw in some shade for part of the day, seems to help.

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