It’s officially summer here in Texas and, to put it plainly, it sucks. It’s been over 100 degrees every day this week and it won’t be letting up any time soon.
That said, I can sit inside in the AC, but my tomatoes are stuck outside. Tomatoes like the sun, but our sun is a little too much for them and they get scorched easily. I’m finally going to help them out this year by building a simple plant shade out of PVC pipe.
This is going to be a really fast DIY. Seriously, you’re going to spend more time at the store than you are building this thing.
Supplies:
- 1/2" 5ft long PVC pipe x12
- 1/2" corner elbows x8
- 40% shade cloth
- Zip ties
- Landscape pins
How-to:
Honestly, the entirety of this how-to could be “put it together”. It’s so easy I didn’t even take photos and took me about 10 minutes to complete.
Build your base around your vegetable garden- I have a 4ft square raised bed. Then, stick the 4 vertical pipes on each corner, and lastly, put your top pieces in.
I wish had some help to pull the shade across, but I got it on there eventually. I wove zip ties through the grommets and attached them to each corner. Be careful about your shade cloth drooping in the middle. Feel free to attach the zip ties lower down to mitigate this.
I stuck between 2-3 landscape pins on each side to help hold it down. I don’t think we’ll get too much wind back there, but just in case it can’t hurt.
And you’re done! You can make this any size you need, but this way you don’t need any tools.
