Under cover plants

August and September in Texas means it's time to plant for the fall harvest. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and the like get a second chance when the weather turns cooler. With 72 days of temperatures reaching 100+ degrees, it's difficult to get transplants going. The sun will bake the seeds and transplants before the root system can develop.

One trick -- use shade cloth. Adding shade can help keep the sun off the plants and the soil a little cooler and moister. Here, we are using 60% shade shade cloth. With 13 hours of sunlight a day, and overnight temperatures of 80 degrees, our new plants are getting plenty of sun and seem to be doing well. (You'll notice there is no cloth in the middle -- those are peppers and eggplants planted in the spring and still going. They are well established and don't need the shade).

To put up the shade cloth, we simple hammered metal posts in the ground, placed the shade cloth over the posts and clamped the cloth into place. Using claps is nice because we can easily unclamp and pull the cloth back. You'll wanted to do this when weeding, otherwise you are bent over under the cloth while working on that section.

You probably can't tell, but we've placed plastic bottles over the posts to keep the posts from tearing into the cloth. My husband may be drinking way too much Diet Coke and juice at work, but at least this is a great way to put the bottles to use instead of just recycling. He cut off the tops (which he did recycle) and placed the bottles upside down on the posts.

The other thing we are doing to encourage the garden is we put down a layer of mulch. Many folks are using straw mulch this time of year, but we can get free mulch from the Pflugerville recycling center (on the other side of the wooden fence), so we just use that.

It seems to be working. The beans we planted last week are starting to sprout and the peppers we planted two weeks ago are growing. The eggplants (3-4 weeks ago) look strong. The tomatoes, which we planted with the eggplants, are hanging in there and we're hoping they will really take off soon.