Comment

Comment by Chris Smith on November 20, 2010 at 9:09am

Thanks Kobus, Ill look into the hail netting. I have designed this cover so that it will keep water off and not trap heat causing the plants to wilt. I want to keep the ends and sides open.

I also do not want to prevent the bugs from coming and going. Last winter I covered two troughs with netting for greenhouses that provided 10% shading. I found that those troughs get infested with white fly and aphids while the uncovered troughs had no bug problems. I concluded that the fully covered troughs were keeping out the beneficial bugs and keeping in the bad ones. Once I removed the screens mother nature corrected the problem.

If I had any real wind issues my design would be considerably different. My biggest concern is that the cover will act as a wing and create lift.

Comment by Chris Smith on November 19, 2010 at 11:50pm

We are very fortunate to have very little wind where we are located. The Kona coast is on the leeward side of the island and protected from the trade winds by a couple of volcano's that are almost 14,00 feet tall. The only time we get any real wind is after a winter front blows through and the winds turn south. We are approaching winter and the fronts will be here soon. It will be interesting to see how it holds up. Our micro climate tends to get very sunny, hot and dry in the winter so I plan to put shade cloth over the plastic in the next week. The shade cloth should help reinforce the plastic.