Hello everyone, and welcome back to my garden, so it is a beautiful morning. I've been out here most
of the morning because it's well nice and cool it's going to be another hot one today.
So, just going around doing a little pruning, a little watering, before the sun comes out
and I've moved most of my garden to the back area of the property because we've been dealing with
a wind issue so, today I want to talk about some of the things, and I'm sure a lot of you guys are
going through this with some extreme temperatures or weather conditions, so I'll talk about where my
garden is at, what I'm doing with it, and maybe some of the things I'm doing will help you as
well. Now, I don't have the rain and humidity issues that some of the northeast are having.
I'm in southern California, so I have, of course, the heat, and I have wind. I have some wicked wind.
If you're in this region sometimes we talk about the Santa Ana's blowing in but we have a coastal
breeze on top of that, so we're about 15 miles from the coast, and I love that coastal breeze but, that
breeze turns into 15-20 mile an hour winds, sometimes 30 miles an hour winds, sometimes more.
Last season I thought I could handle it. I did everything I could and it actually went pretty
good until I got hit with a wicked windstorm, which kind of took a few plants down. So, I'm going to
talk about some of the things that we're doing. One thing that I did for the wind, is I moved my beds.
Now, I know that not everyone can do that so if you've watched previous videos you know
that we're in transition, we're looking for land, and so I didn't know if I was going to be here
this season so, I did a lot of my planting in containers and I have some movable raised beds.
So, I decided to move all of the raised beds in the back and I thought that was the easiest solution.
They're all on wheels, so we took down some of the trellising, and I moved them back here. Now,
that's one way, but I know a lot of people don't have that, and if you can move a bed, it might not
be until next season, right? You struggle through a season and then you reconfigure your beds later.
The second way to help with the wind issue is trellising. And that helped me a lot last season
so, I had some arch trellises. This is a cucumber trellis, I have tomato cages, I also have here
next to me, and I'll show it to you, is my ladder trellis. So, the trellising is good because it
creates a structure or foundation for the plants and as they grow up and kind of weave through it
then they can withstand that wind a little bit more. Now, with my arched trellis
it did really well at first but, that wind really started. Especially my peas they were
kind of growing over the top and not weaved in enough, so they just blew right off of it.
So, if you do have a wind issue, I recommend that you kind of weave your plants through
it so that way it's a little easier for them. So, that is one way to do it. Now, what can happen
and just as a precaution is the plants that are so on this side, if this is the wind side these
plants are going to take quite a hit. And that's what's been happening, is that wind keeps beating
at my plants, and the plants are stunted, the plants are more susceptible, because they're stressed, to
pests and disease, so that can be an issue. So, you may have some plants that, say, on this side,
you're sacrificing a little bit and on the other side, they're protecting
those other plants. Now, let me show you a second way to kind of mitigate your wind, okay?
Okay so, here is a close up the cucumber trellis I was talking about.
And how you can weave those plants through there. Now, this bed was really struggling when it was upfront.
This little watermelon plant was having a hard time it's finally coming back.
My chamomile was struggling. It was literally blowing the little petals off of the flowers.
My cucumbers, that cucumber plant down there, you can see the edges of one leaf,
that's what all the leaves looked like when it was upfront. I have a volunteer tomato plant.
That bell pepper plant gave me a couple purple beauty bell peppers, but, again the wind was just
hitting it so hard. Now, so the first thing I said you could do is, you could do your trellises, the second thing,
is to plant a plant like this swiss chard, that's going to block some of your other
plants from the wind, and this created a little bit of a shield but not enough. Not enough at all.
Now, over here,
I have a pretty good tomato cage. It's not as sturdy as say this tomato cage, which is
very sturdy, but it was sturdy enough, that it helped my tomatoes in the wind. But, by planting
this big beautiful
brassica, that actually blocked these plants much better. So, this cucumber plant here was doing
horribly and still is struggling. It's getting better, but when plants are in distress, they're
just so prone, you can see there's powdery mildew on here, and it was just getting beat up so much.
But, this plant here really protected the tomatoes, the bell pepper,
there's a cucumber plant in there, this cucumber plant was on the edge so, it wasn't protected as
well. There was another cucumber plant, well this one here, that was on the edge, so it was
having a hard time. But, a plant like this that fully blocks the wind, and it really
it did fine with the wind so, I was willing to sacrifice that plant, but I really didn't have to.
Now, another way
to deal with wind and heat is shade cloth. So, we have things covered quite a bit here, and that's
partially because well, with the extreme heat I have a lot more critters that are trying to get
my little garden, but I have a lot of plants that are struggling a bit so,
this does double duty. Right here, I'm just using
some bamboo poles
and that's because I needed to pull this up a little bit, I've actually got corn in here
and you can see in the beginning, I was using these, and I also have some wire that I can cut
into hoops and put hoops up, but they weren't tall enough right? So, my corn is starting to get taller.
So, I got some bamboo, and I secured my shade cloth to it. It does two things: it helps with the wind,
and then it also helps with the sun exposure. Now, this little area here brings in a lot of wind
so, what I may have to do is build almost a privacy screen or another trellising system
right there because this corn can absolutely take a beating during the wind.
Now, this structure back here I have no problem with the wind
and that's because this and I'm holding everything down, and I'll show you.
These are those boxes I built or really screens because each one is a panel
that I can put together. Now, I use some hardware cloth for this, so those openings are pretty small
and even without that row cover on there it still cuts down the wind really really well
and then, when I add that row cover or shade cloth
I cut down sun, and I cut down wind. So, of course, this is going to be
a little more intensive, it's going to take some building and cost would be a bit higher, but this
is another way that I've dealt with wind and if you saw those screens in the video, and we'll put
the link in here, I said I was going to put hinges on here, so each one of these panels
is separate, so I can just build little boxes or big boxes, and when I want to store them they
store flat. But, we didn't use hinges. It didn't work. So, I'll show you what we did instead.
Okay, so I've opened this up so you can see that what we did instead of those hinges is we used dowels.
And, you can see here, we have dowels on the side of these.
Now, all I do is push them together. Which has worked out really, really good.
A lot of these plants need to be shaded right now, they're a bit delicate for the sun
and I'm hoping like that bok choy, and this mustard here, celery,
Japanese spinach, keeping it covered will help it get through this heat and into my fall season.
And it's also protected from the wind now. Yes, it's
it's a little makeshift, but it's working so far, I'm pretty happy about it.
Alright, so that is what is happening in my garden
and honestly, you know I've lost a few plants, from the heat and the wind but overall, I've been
able to save quite a few plants, right? That's a part of what gardening is. You're not going to win
every battle, you just want to win a good portion of them. So, just to recap. For wind, I think some of
the options trellising I love. I love trellising for a lot of reasons, you can grow a lot more,
I think pulling your plants up off the soil allows you to mitigate some of your pests and disease issues.
I think trellising is good for wind and for sun, because you can block other plants,
you can set up row covers or shade cloths, so I love trellising. The one thing I didn't mention
is definitely making sure that you direct those plants, but use some of your tie-downs with them.
I think that was my big mistake last season. I had that beautiful arch and I really didn't
weave them in and I didn't tie them down enough. So, that wind just really took them off.
Using a trellis is one. Second, was building a plant that blocks the wind.
I'm getting distracted because that is the biggest bumblebee I have ever seen. I got to show you that.
Oh my gosh! Do you see how big that guy is? He's huge!
That's absolutely the coolest thing!
I just love the garden!
Okay, sorry about that. That was the coolest bumblebee ever. Well, not ever but it was super cool
and he was big and black, that was incredible. Alright, back to what you can do so our recap.
You can do your trellising system, he's back, he left, and the bumblebee is back. Alright, trellising
system, that will help you not only with wind it'll help you with sun because you can cover it.
Second thing, is to plant right? For that wind, so something that's big bushy
can either handle the wind or is a sacrifice plant so you're gonna sacrifice it for the other plants
but it'll block that wind, so that's number two. Number three, for me, is the row cover or shade
cloth I think that that can really help you with the wind as well as the sun. Now, you just
need to make sure that you have a good foundation for that shade cloth or row cover so you can use
hoops. Right now, I have it secured on bamboo, but the bamboo I need to make sure is secure
against my raised bed, so I've got it latched to the wood, or I'm using rocks to hold down.
This shade cloth, so and I've got little clips. I have clips that are made just for hoops, I have
clips that are made to go around the bamboo like you saw, but you just really need to have a strong
hold on to that because it can fly pretty easily, and mine has. And the last thing I showed you
were my little protection cages. So, I have some cages to keep critters out it actually helps me
with wind and it helps me with sun because I can cover it. I used a shade cloth on it
and well, right now, it has a row cover on it, but the mesh material is hardware cloth.
We did a video about it, so we'll link below to the video and then I also was able to move my
beds. I was able to move the beds mid-season because they're on wheels or their containers.
And, I just needed to get it done. For those of you who can't move your beds you know you might plan
out next season and maybe you can pull them up and move them next season, but if you can't I've
given you quite a few different ways that you can try and protect your beds. And finally, the privacy
walls you could build something. I would make it out of wood so it's very sturdy, but you could
build something that isn't necessarily a trellis system, though it could be, but more is a block
for your wind so that would be my final recommendation. So, like I said before so far so
good. I've had some wins, some losses. I would love to be growing more and more and more. I am planning
fall now, so I'm planting a bit more for my fall crops, so I'll talk about that next time I see you.
Thanks so much again for joining me. If you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to this
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miss any great content. Thanks again for joining me and I will see you again soon. Happy gardening!