Keeping a gardening in triple digit temperatures

....can require a little creativity

If you are hoping for something like this

And trying to avoid this

And don't have money growing on your trees either (no matter the weather).

Yeah, that's us. Our garden came to a scorching halt early last summer, because of the intense sun.

But this year... a wonderful idea fell upon us during our Great Landscape when we noticed that we had tons of weed barrier fabric leftover.

Since that money tree is broken, we've been trying to reuse and up-cycle as much as possible, so naturally we had to get some more use out of this stuff that is so amazing and super cheap!


We bought really big rolls to do our entire yard, but you can get a 3' x 25' roll for around $10 at Home Depot. Could you imagine buying outdoor fabric for that cheap?

It's not the most stylish or even interesting looking stuff, but in addition to blocking weeds look at all the other stuff it does:

• Saves Big on Watering, by conserving the soil's moisture
• Provides complete weed control
• Only fabric that is hydrophilic treated - letting air, water and nutrients through
• Fabric is black on the back side, for the ultimate in light blockage
• Uses multiple-layer technology

Letting air, water and nutrients through? Blocking light? Hum... You see where we're going with this??

We didn't need this to block weeds in our garden bed, but what if we put it OVER the plants to slightly limit extra sun?

GENIUS!

Ok, to be fair I should specify, Kevin's genius idea, but where would the idea be without the actual crafter behind it right?

Before

After

The nice thing is that it still gets rain water through and it doesn't completely block the sun like an awning or many other covers.

Plus, we left the sides open so the vine plants like our cucumbers and pumpkins can crawl toward more sun if they need it.

Why didn't we think of this last year? Our garden was done by July for sure. But not now that we found the fountain...er cover of youth! Who knows how long we'll be growing now!