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.