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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Summer Lettuce Production
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:23:46 -0400


On Apr 29, 2010, at 9:09 PM, cjmaness AT juno.com wrote:

Thank you! You answered my questions! I've been wondering how to secure our shade cloth and I will give the ties a try


Well we are weird I guess (I take that back, I *know* I'm weird.) We use shade cover over hoops, covering the entire hoop and pinned to the ground on both sides with re-pins, just like spun-bonded rowcover (except shadecloth holds up a whole lot better and doesn't need as many pins to keep it from blowing loose).

We started doing it that way because I didn't know any better. I think I'll keep doing it, though, because one of the first things I discovered about it is that it keeps the deer off. As the deer obviously could remove it, I expect it works because they don't realize that there is lettuce under the shadecloth; if we had only the top and/or one side of the hoops covered, the deer could easily see and get at the lettuce, and I don't think it would work at all.

The downside of this technique is that not all varieties of red lettuce will get good color under that complete shade, though it's 30% shadecloth; some of them will, however (Outredgeous and Hyper Red Rumple Waved come to mind). And it's extremely water conserving, which is usually an advantage here, but can cause some problems in long stretches of extremely wet weather, which we do occasionally get.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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