veggie protection in our hot Aussie summers

About 5 years ago we had this great idea of making a hoop shade house to protect our plants in the  extremely hot summers we have here in Australia.
We built the shelter with just three hoops. 2 inch poly agricultural pipe over metal star pickets forming the skeleton. We then covered it with nylon bird mesh to keep out birds and other  nuisance animals and then covered it with high density  shade cloth.
We found that this was totally impractical as it was too shaded and the plants went spindy  and leggy and  didn't thrive.
We removed the shade cloth and just left it for several years with just the mesh.

Recently I had a whole pile of potatoes sprout  and I suggested to Brian that we plant them up at the farm in those garden beds, As they would have no protection we mulched them heavily with sugar cane mulch .It has been extremely dry up here  and the mulch has helped greatly.
So yesterday I suggested to Brian that we really needed to put some cover over the potatoes or they just would not survive the next  couple of months and we would loose them.
So we decided to revamp the  hoop  structure a little.

Where we originally had three poly hoops we now have five.
We then screwed in  three horizontal rows of metal as   strenthening supports to the structure.

For this we used some old metal tent poles that we had been hoarding for years for no particular reason but knew they would come in handy one day.
We then made a very lucky phone call to enquire  about the price of shade cloth . We first rang our next major town  which is 32 miles away (thinking that our little local place wouldn't stock it. The price in the bigger town was $13.90 per metre for 3.6 metre wide cloth.
We decided  just to check  our local fellow (6 miles away) to be really surprised that he quoted us $5.60 per metre for the same width. We went in immediately and purchased  the required amount , double checked the price, paid and made a  very quick exit as that was super,super cheap.

We attached the shade cloth  ,making it higher up on the back side of the cover as the sun is more prominent on the  front side most of the day.
On the side where it is hanging down we attached a 7.5 metre long 1 inch diametre plastic pipe so that we could use the overhang as a roll up blind, that we have up for most of the year and just roll down when the heat is extreme.

We think that this amount of shade will be the right amount and that hopefully we will grow  lot's of healthy vegetables under here. Our blue Cattle dog Tilly certainly seemed to be enjoying the shade as she barely moved from laying in one of the gardens for the whole day while we were  working there, even today she has spent a few hours under there9 even though there is plenty of other shade for her.)
So here's hoping this works,I will update you all at a future date to check on the progress and see how it goes.
So a cheery farewell to all,
regards,
Jane.

Thanks Dad !!!

Our Blue Cattle Dog Tilly  and her mate Doug the Kelpie love to chase  a soccer ball. They will chase it all day every day all over the farm.They get to be a real nuisance at times pushing the ball into the middle of what ever project you happen to be doing at the time and expecting you to kick it or throw it for them..

We have a grey water pit at  the farm into which all out kitchen,bathroom and laundry grey water flows into. We then hook up a small petrol pump and pump the water from the pit  out onto the lawn and trees. It passes through a rudimentary grease trap before running into the pit.
The pit is quite deep, my husband can nearly stand up in it.
Well recently when Brian was pumping it out, the dogs were racing around crazy with their ball and it just happened to fall into the pit.I just love the following images, they were just too cute.

And then it was like...."Hey Tilly the ball has  fallen in, come and look"

And then...."oh dear what will we do"
I think they thought that if they watched hard enough and really willed it to happen, that the ball would just magically appear again.

I think it was about then that they realized that Dad was there and they began asking him to save it for them

 

So good old Dad came to the rescue and pulled out that dirty smelly old soccer ball out  of the grey water pit.

So there were two happy dogs ,once again playing with their old soccer ball.

Another time when Brian had just started  pumping it out, Doug the Kelpie was racing around chasing the ball and then he just disappeared. Suddenly Brian realized that he had fallen into the pit and had to quickly rescue him as the water level was quite high. It certainly scared him and he was very wary of it that day.
For safety reasons we always keep a heavy concrete lid on it, the only time it is removed is when it is being pumped out. Because we don't live there full time it doesn't have to be emptied as often as it will when we become full timers.
 Today is the end of Winter, with Spring just around the corner with the promise of new growth and colour, all we need is that ever evasive rain.
Until next time,
Cheers,
Jane.