I dunno if a solid sheet would last around here, right now we've got sustained at 30 mph and gusts to 50 mph, and I had to go out and lay down a dozen more steel t-posts and big rocks on top my 70 foot by 4 ft wide strips of woven polypropylene weed barrier I laid down last week when I planted onions, and they're flat on the ground.

I have thought of using straw bales, because the worst of it is in April - May - early June, when the plants are small, and one could put the bales right up against the plants.

Yeah, it may be a good time to have folks in your neck of the woods think about it.

My greenhouse and hoophouse buck like an unmounted bronco when there's that much wind. I have no experience with silt fences but I've watched a river wash up against one once and thought it amazing that it wasn't swept away.

Stone fences, I know would help but they cast shadows. Since our prevailing winds are more-or-less from the south and the fences would need to be close to slow the wind against the soil . . . the shadows wouldn't be of much help in a small garden. However, stones I've got. I could build the Great Wall of China. (or at least a part of it ;o)

DigitS'

What surprises me is the vertical 4.6" x 16' cattle panels I use in the garden never blow over. I have two wired lengthwise together for a 32' length, and there are 4 t-posts holding the whole thing up. My mid-August, they are covered with foliage from vines and tomatoes and so on, and we'll get some pretty good wind gusts. They never move.

We've a forecast for 4" of snow on Sat night. I sure hope they're wrong.

So David, do you think you could cover those panels with plastic, sinking 8-inches or so into the ground, and have everything hold together for 3 months early in the season?

D'S'

Steve, IÂm not following exactly what size youÂre talking about here, but if you put up solid, unvented plastic, I think youÂre going to have to go looking for it in Montana! It doesnÂt take much surface area for wind to get ahold of something and knock it over, blow it away, or rip it up. North of Denver itÂs not too unusual to have "high profile vehicle" warnings on the roads when we have high winds around here. If the wind can blow over 18-wheelers, as heavy as they are, I think itÂs gonna make mincemeat out of an unvented piece of plastic. When I lived out in the country south of Denver, we had a tennis court, and the "downhill" side (most exposed side) of the fence was covered with windscreen fabric. ThatÂs a mesh fabric, and even that had ventsÂu-shaped flapsÂcut all over it to keep the wind from ripping the (10' high, commercially installed and WELL anchored) chain link fence out of the ground. If youÂre not thinking about too much surface area, I think it might work if you cut a bunch of u-shaped flaps in it to ease the wind pressure.

Are there any engineers around here? Somebody must be able to give you a formula to figure out how much wind pressure a specific number of square feet of surface area could take.

You could put up a small section of what youÂre thinking of just to test it out.

I like David's idea of temporarily using hay bales. Nothing short of a tornado is going to blow away hay bales!

Skybird

Well, watching the big sheets flap around yesterday, and trying to capture them and hold them down, the problem would be stopping a single sheet from acting like a sail. One of those things was impossible to hang on to, and was pulling all 230+ lbs of me around.

I drove into town this morning, and along a brand new road where they had put up, last fall, a long, 2' high black plastic wind barrier that, as far as I can tell, is supposed to stop dirt from blowing on the road, because I can't think of any other reason for it. Today it was pretty much flattened, but it did stay up for several months. Thats pretty short, and as far as I can tell, they just pound some cheapo wood stakes every 6 feet or so to hold it up.

- Snow fence slows the wind enough to cause the snow to drift, and that isn't held down by much. So instead of a single sheet, maybe something that would let some air through would work better?

Here, 90% of the wind comes out of the SW or W. Except for the 8% of the time it comes out of the N, and that can vary from week to week in the spring. Then there's that 2% of time it comes from the SE, and when that starts blowing, its time to think of some heavy percipitation.

Well, the silt fence in the illustration is only 16 inches to 20 inches above ground. (I guess that means the wire fencing is only 24 inches.) That's a little short, by the way, for double-duty, vining-veggie use but I've seen cukes grow very nicely on that size of fence.

If it didn't blow away, a 2nd question would be how far would it create a shelter from the wind? "The protected area will extend eight to ten times the height of the fence." That's from the Government of Saskatchewan, Agriculture and Food linked below. The webpage is concerned with the protection of livestock.

From the charts, the distance has a great deal to do with porosity. It would also have to do with getting the angle right, if the fence only runs in one direction. 200 inches isn't a whole heck of a lot but it is, uh, ummm, nearly 17 feet.

If one was to completely fence a 15' by 15' garden. Or, run it up 24 inches and fence a 20' by 20' garden - might work.

Here's the portable livestock windbreak.

{{gwi:1202006}}

D'S'

Here is a link that might be useful: Portable Windbreak Fences