I have been in Redding many times and can agree it is HOT there. It really depends on what you are growing in the vegetable line. Many of our summer time vegetables, given enough water, will love the full sun of Redding. I think you will need to separate into different beds those plants that will need some summer shade to prevent them from bolting or sunburning. Al

Some of us have used shade cloth for years. I only use it during extreme heat, which in Marietta usually means parts of July and August of most years. Shade cloth is a great garden tool, but you have to be careful you don't overdo it. Too much shade can slow down plant growth and bring production to a screeching halt. I normally use it only for peppers and tomatoes, but I would use it to cool down the lettuce and extend the season if I was growing lettuce in full sun. I plant my lettuce in a place where it gets afternoon shade so don't have to put shadecloth over it. Be sure you leave adequate space for good air flow between the top of your plants and the shade cloth or you may end up baking your plants. You can buy shade cloth that allows set percentages of sunlight to penetrate the cloth. I've only used 30% and 40% and both have worked well. I'm going to link a recent discussion on shade cloth. If you are in an area that is exposed to the wind be sure you have a good support structure for the shade cloth so it doesn't blow loose or partially loose and whip around in the wind beating your plants to death. Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Discussion of Shade Cloth

I am having a tired, cranky day. You know, I am just so wiped out from all of the long days of cooking and fire training since last Tuesday that I have absolutely no energy and no motivation and the ambitious "to do" list I had for the garden today will be my "to do" list for tomorrow or the next day, I guess. All of the preceding explains why I didn't drag myself out of bed and out of the house early today like I usually do, and when I finally made it out to the greenhouse to open it up, the thermometer read 98 degrees at 9:30 a.m. I quickly opened all the doors and vents and carried the flats of sweltering plants outside to sit in the much cooler outdoor air. The temperature went ahead and climbed to 100 degrees before it began dropping after a few minutes. It has stayed at 90 degrees or lower since then. If I ran a fan, I probably could get it down to 85. My goal for this week is to get everything possible into the ground so I can empty out the greenhouse. It is too hot in there unless I run a fan and I'm not inclined to use a fan if I can just move the plants outside. With rain in the forecast tonight and tomorrow, it might be hard to get the planting done, but I may just mud them in if I have to. Jay, I am starting to think I should have gotten 60% shade cloth. It surprises me how quickly the greenhouse heats up each day and how early it heated up in winter. I'm afraid with 60% the plants might grow too slowly though. The cats think the greenhouse is a cat spa and lounge around in it all day and swat at the moths, butterflies, crane flies and June bugs that venture inside. So, I guess as long as I open up the doors all summer, the cats may have a nice hangout. They like it so much that in the mornings they are sitting outside the greenhouse doors waiting for me to open it up. It has replaced the potting shed and garden as their favorite hangout. Otherwise, it is so hot here that the greenhouse is about to go dormant for a few months, though I may store some garden tools in it or something. There are thunderstorms to our southeast/east moving up from Texas into southeastern OK, and they just put our county under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch, so I need to run back outside and crank up the Mantis and finish cultivating the areas that have been too wet to plant. They have a nice collection of weeds, particularly bindweed, sprouting that I want to rototill under before it rains and they grow some more. I've cultivated about 1500 square feet today and have about 500 more to go. Then, depending on the weather, I can transplant the remaining tomatoes and peppers, and direct sow the rest of the warm season crops later this week. I can't believe it is April 2, and most of my garden is planted. I thought I'd get to use the greenhouse later into the spring--until May at least, and I didn't expect to have this much in the ground already--not that I am complaining. I know we need moisture, but I wish I could have 2 more dry days. We are just finally drying out from the last big rain. Jay, I have a big TroyBilt tiller in the garage and several smaller ones. The only one I use is the Mantis because the others throw me around too much. Tim uses the bigger ones. It is amazing how much equipment you can accumulate with just a few acres to maintain. We built our garage with all that equipment in mind, and I am starting to think we didn't build it big enough. Carol, It is time. If y'all start planning and building it now, it will be ready in time for you to grow cool-season crops inside of it all winter. I think my onions have been in a funk from too much moisture too early in their life, but they've snapped out of it recently. The potatoes have gone bonkers and are growing into trees. The snap peas are miserable in this heat. I do keep thinking that some things aren't growing as fast as they should, and then I look at the calendar and think to myself that I've lost track, too, because it got so hot so early. Our local TV met wrote on his blog about the correlation between a warm March and the summer weather in the same year, and basically concluded there's no direct correlation---that a warmer-than-average March doesn't necessarily mean a warmer-than-average summer. That's good, I guess, but so far the warm trend continues, and for as long as it lasts, I will fear that summer is going to be miserable. I need a big shade cloth that will float in the air over my head as I walk around and work. My plain and simple straw hat just isn't doing the job.

I have no idea how much this stuff would cost, so I don't know if it's a possibility or not, but you might want to check out the "wind screen" that's used around tennis courts. Twenty five years ago I had a tennis court in the backyard in the hills down near Parker--barren country, TOTALLY exposed to the wind. We eventually got wind screen put on the fence on the one end which was 10 or 11' high. The wind screen only went partway up, can't remember just how far. It was a black fabric (don't know if it comes in other colors) and there were some vents cut in it here and there, but they were very small--something about the fabric allowed some wind to get thru so there wouldn't be TOO much resistance. And the posts the fence was attached to were BIG, there were a bunch of them, and they were totally concreted in! So I think how well anything is gonna work will depend on how well the posts/fence is put in. If it's just posts "pounded" into the ground, I think you might be tempting fate to attach anything that would build up a substantial amount of resistance, but it might be worth it to find out more about tennis court type wind screen. It seems to me they were able to tell us how much wind per square foot (or something) the stuff could take--don't remember for sure anymore! Just a thought! Skybird