posted 3 years ago
I own 10 acres with house and water well in the Mojave Desert in Southern California. It gets up to 137° F in the direct summer sun and down to 10° F in the winter. For fruit trees, I grow pomegranates, mulberrys, pistachios and jujubes in the direct sun and wind successfully. When I have grown apples and apricots out in the direct sun, they die of sunburn. So I erected a 50% blocking shade cloth on a framework overhead with slat wind fence and planted these sun sensitive semi-dwarf fruit trees under it. This year I added 2 peach trees that survived the intense summer.
I am just offering this shade cloth idea as a way to jump start a food forest before the shade trees are large enough to protect the sensitive fruit bearers. Now my plans are to plant shade and leguminous trees among the apple, apricots and peaches.
Alan, what do you think of this idea?
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