Thanks for your reply , greenhouser2. My raised are watered till the water can be seen dripping below. I want the shade structure so that I can hybridize with my daylilies. Daylilies will not set seed if temperature is above 80 degrees. Every day since May we have had temperatures in the low to mid 90's. With water restrictions I can only water one day a week either before 6 am or after 7pm Therefore even with all the water I could give them , the sun has done a number on the foliage drying it out till it just crumbles when I touch it. I lost a lot of plants in the late Feb freeze we had and I am trying to get the survivors some protection so I can at least attempt to pollinate and produce seeds this coming spring.

I am new to gardening and started my first garden this year. When I started my pepper and tomato plants indoors, I went ahead and started my squash, zucinni, and cucumber at the same time. The squash grew a lot faster than I thought so I had to go ahead and put it in the ground. We had a somewhat cold snap for here and it got down to 29 for the low and upper 50's for the a couple of days. I didn't uncover the plants and in one 50 degree day, I lost all of my squash, zucinni, and cucumber plants because I did not vent the tarp and get them fresh cool air during the day. A couple weeks later, I put other transplants in the ground and we had another weekend of frosts. I covered the plants at night and vented them during the day and it worked great. Live and learn.

Hi George - the box is made from sawmill-cut cedar, that is a full 1" x 8".The 2x4's at the top of each trellis is what I intend to attach my slings to - for supporting the heavy items.This way,I can literally hang probably 100 lbs of produce items from each one.The wire mesh is very small,but will only be supporting the vines.And....thank you for the compliment on the design.As you can tell,it was not a copy from anyone else.I only looked at what other people were using,and tried to improve on their ideas.Some people think that i'm kinda weird -or different, and hardly post messages to my threads.I have obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which makes me a perfectionist- and everything has to be a certain way -with failure never being an option.( I have already planted my garden, and have redrawn it over 30 times,because it's still not perfect in my mind).If that gives you any idea what I go through with everything.But, feel free to ask any question - because I can build anything from a sandbox to a space shuttle.I have degrees in air conditioning/refrigeration,industrial electricity,industrial hydraulics,carpentry,and industrial maintenance.Hope everything works out.

Wow, much to think about. The pictures you sent looked a lot better than grass on the slop with a landscaped bed. This approach would really soften up my house much better. Low maintenance is a high priority for me. So I think trying to get away from shrubs is a good plan. I'm just not familiar with plantings at all. I'm still a bit hung up on figuring out what the height of the step down off the porch should be. Now that I understand your yellow/blue lines, it appears from your sketch the dirt line would be every bit of a 24" dropoff with ground cover around 18". This also looks similar to the photos you sent. I was worried this would be too much but assuming you agree with those dimensions, I'm going with it. The picture below gives a bigger picture. Note the patio section we've been discussing is on the right, it's way off to the side of the house (actually the carriage house/inlawsuite that was my grandmother's "retirement home" for 10 years until she passed away. (Don't be confused by the identical section in the middle labeled as Future: Phase 2, I was going to try out this concept on the side of the house with lower grade before attempting it in the middle section.) Here's an image looking out with the red circle on the left showing the area we're discussing. The panorama distorts the middle of the house making it appear as the center of the breeezeway. Because this is off to the side of the carriage house, it's really removed so I wasn't overly concerned about plantings, however, low maintenance is much better. Could you tell me what the purple and pink ground cover are. I'm not the most creative and would like to try to just copy what's in the photo if it works in 7b.