Will a tipi work as a protection from extreme temperatures?

My family and I live in a desert climate, grow zone 10b. While I love being able to grow food all year round, It brings some very unique problems due to temperature fluctuations. Some times during the year the temperature fluctuates up to 50 degrees from day to night. We also get very little rain, but that changes year by year. This year has been especially bad, so I lost an avocado tree, an ornamental cold hardy banana tree, both of my passion fruits, and one of my orange trees. The reason was that we got Santa Anna winds with temperatures in the 80’s for a week, and then the night temperatures dropped to 32F at night.
This had me thinking that I should be able to create something that’s easy to setup for protection at night and open up during the day, so my plants will get some sunlight. I have  tried commercial frost covers, but since my plants don’t go dormant, using them means that they don’t get any or very little light, and tropical plants need light all year round.
Once a plant has matured and settled in, it’s usually not a big problem, but young plants need careful cultivation to survive here.
I have been thinking about it for a while, and tried several solutions that didn’t work.
Then it hit me, how about a tipi design? I am thinking about a thick cover for frost protection, that I can change out with a shade cloth if necessary.
I am thinking one, where I can open up part of it, during the day time, to let in air and sun, and then close it up again in the evening.
I have plenty of fabric, and I can probably find a pattern for it too, but I want to ask you all, if you think this is a good idea, and if there are things I should add to it. Any design experience would be welcome too. It needs to be portable, so I can take it down, once the warm season starts. I don’t want to spend time making it, just to have it fail.
It’s important for me to find a solution. Every few year we loose fruit and/or trees due to extreme conditions, and it costs of in both time, work and money.
I hope someone can help me with this problem. Also, this is a temporary problem. Once my tall trees has grow high and wide enough, they should give plenty of sun protection during the warm and hot season. I hope they also will give some protection during the cold season, but if not I will continue to need frost protection for my most sensitive plants.

I’m going to go with - yes!

This year we had one cold night with a string of warmer days predicted after. I wanted to give my garden another week so I tossed some blankets, towels, and tarps over my more frost sensitive plants.
As you can see below, this wasn’t perfect as the squash leaves which were touching the blanket died, but the main body of the plant was saved!

I also put a big jug of water under the blanket to also help buffer the temps.

I kept this going a few days later when a similar weather pattern rolled in.
Overall, I’d say I got at least a week longer growing season out of it.

I imagine a tipi purpose built for the task would have good results. Especially if you could find some extra mass to tuck inside as well.

Clay McGowen wrote:I’m going to go with - yes!

This year we had one cold night with a string of warmer days predicted after. I wanted to give my garden another week so I tossed some blankets, towels, and tarps over my more frost sensitive plants.
As you can see below, this wasn’t perfect as the squash leaves which were touching the blanket died, but the main body of the plant was saved!

I also put a big jug of water under the blanket to also help buffer the temps.

I kept this going a few days later when a similar weather pattern rolled in.
Overall, I’d say I got at least a week longer growing season out of it.

I imagine a tipi purpose built for the task would have good results. Especially if you could find some extra mass to tuck inside as well.

Yeah, I tried towels, duvets and regular store bought frost protection, but the lack of light killed the plants. We only get light frost here, but it’s enough to damage the flowers on my banana trees, so we don’t get any bananas. We are also in the situation where we are getting fewer cold days, so I am adding tropical trees, shrubs and vines to the forest garden. Some of those plants need protection from temperatures below 40F. I keep them in groups, so a tipi can cover more than one plant. I also have plants that can’t handle temperatures past 105F, and tipis are easy to move, so during the hot season I could move it to the hot sensitive plants, and use a shade cloth instead of the frost cover. I found out last fall, that my elderberries really don’t like it, when it’s 120F. It dried out all of its berries within 48 hours, even though we used more irrigation. My plan is to prune them, down to a size where I can cover them, if we get that high temperatures again.
I guess I will have to ask my husband for help with figuring out what size to make, I am horrible at math.
Thank you for your input.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:I guess I will have to ask my husband for help with figuring out what size to make, I am horrible at math.

Lonnie, from the "Far North Bushcraft and Survival" YT channel has several tipi or pyramid style tent construction videos.  These are actually hot tents (i.e. tents with a sheet metal stove inside), but the geometry might still work for your purposes.  You could use 6mil poly drop cloths, or the heavier weight Dura-Skrim or Visqueen with fiber reinforcement, or woven, bonded green house cover plastic.  Something UV-stabilized would probably be best, given your strong sunlight.

Here's a recipe for a conical, tipi-style tent:


Note that this is not a "true tipi", in that it is a right circular cone without smoke flaps, whereas real tipis have an egg-shaped floor plan, smoke flaps, and a distinct tilt.  The book by the Laubin's (https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Tipi-Its-History-Construction/dp/0806122366) gives plans for true tipis, though I don't think those are likely necessary for your intended purpose.  The out-of-round floor plan and tilt of a true tipi are supposed to provide a better floor space layout and improved ventilation and better smoke draw (in combination with the smoke flaps).

Here's a pyramid style tent plan from Lonnie:


You could proportionally scale either of these to meet the required dimensions.

To be entirely transparent, I have no idea if a tipi or pyramid tent will work for your purposes - the wide temperature variation and the xeric conditions are challenging - but these videos give some simplified instructions for creating such tents.

Lonnie has lots of other good videos on camping and survival in the Alaskan bush, but that's all pretty far removed from your environment!

Kevin Olson wrote:

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:I guess I will have to ask my husband for help with figuring out what size to make, I am horrible at math.

Lonnie, from the "Far North Bushcraft and Survival" YT channel has several tipi or pyramid style tent construction videos.  These are actually hot tents (i.e. tents with a sheet metal stove inside), but the geometry might still work for your purposes.  You could use 6mil poly drop cloths, or the heavier weight Dura-Skrim or Visqueen with fiber reinforcement, or woven, bonded green house cover plastic.  Something UV-stabilized would probably be best, given your strong sunlight.!

Thank you for the input and videos, I will watch them.
I was thinking about using landscape fabric for the winter tent. It’s black, so it will absorb heat easily and it was send to me by mistake so also free. The plan is also to use a heavy layer of mulch to protect the roots. We don’t get very many chill hours in our area. So far this year, we have gotten less than 100 chill hours. Most years, we get between 200 and 250 chill hours, but for some reason we have 500 in 2023. I was very frustrated in 2023, since my banana trees had finally set a flower and started on bananas. Then we had really bad weather and the flower got frost damaged, and the tree died as they do once they have produced. I am hoping to prevent this from happening again.
For shade, the plan is to use white row cover fabric, since white will reflect the sunlight away. Both will also be able to raise the moisture in the air, which plants like coffee really like. If this is successful, I am going to give tea another go. So far I have only been successful with plants for herbal tea, since real tea aka Camellia Sinensis sensitive plants, that need a lot of pampering until stablished.