Growing vegetables in extreme heat

When Melbourne has its hottest day ever on record (46.4 degrees C) vegetable growing just outside the city becomes almost impossible.
During the day as temperatures climb well over 40 with strong winds, all we can do is run irrigation over the crops in cycles all day long and hope for the best that things can recover as a cool change moves in during the evening.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• melbourne
• hottest
• day
• ever
• leek
• kohlrabi
• lettuce

[multisustainable]

Use Floating Row Cloth. The cloth will let in 50% to 90% light depending on the one you buy. This will help with the scorching sun. When you water it will stay on the cloth and ground longer keeping the plant/ground moist longer. If you do the method where you cover all sides of the cloth with dirt this keeps all bugs out.

[Bestleeks]

@multisustainable Interesting idea. Thank you.

[trailkeeper]

Has anyone ever tried using some kind of partial sun filter (maby plastic sheeting) in the field to maby block some percentage of the light in situations where the sun is hot and evaporation is high due to that? I know some farmers use plastic at soil level to keep moisture in the soil.

[Bestleeks]

Not a bad idea except for the problem with wind. By late afternoon of that day we had winds of 80km/h when a cool change moved through so you would need something that could withstand that. Some more sensitive high value crops are grown using shade cloth.

[GermanTHR]

ohhh man... that sucks. i am a german farmer. i think about to start growing vegetables.cause sugarbeets, seeds and corn aren´t enough profitable anymore, hopefully this will never happen to me. u have cool videos, pls keep on doing this.

greetz

[Bestleeks]

Thanks. I'm sure in Germany you still have your own risks with snow and ice in the winter.

[miniridgey2]

@LENNYlanes um thats like 40degres cellcius

[LENNYlanes]

haha try living in san antonio texas its going to be 102 degrees F

[trailkeeper]

Of course there is another problem rain fall onto the crops then, unless the plastic is "reeled" back in or irrigation is used.  I guess the idea seems very practical for small home plots or farms.

[trailkeeper]

Ok, thanks for your reply, so I guess it's still something to think about. If the plastic sheet is held basically parallel to the grount or horizontal, it will receive alot less wind than if any part of it was vertical where the wind can push it much easier.