Achieving The Best Use Of Solar Energy In The Garden.

crazygreenthumbs

Jun 22

I have about a quarter acre of land. When we first moved in it was just grass, a gravel play area and one small oak tree. Fast forward eleven years and my yard is fully planted. There are fruit trees and bushes, flowers and habitat for birds etc. I grow almost all of my vegetables in raised beds of a hugelkulter design you can find out how I build these beds here: http://crazygreenthumbs.com/2023/05/19/building-the-perfect-raised-beds-3/ . The beds are situated in front of a privacy fence, which cuts down on late afternoon sun and heat.

The bed I'm planning out is in the center back of this picture, full of corn and surrounded by hardware cloth. The beds in front are mostly full of low growing sweet potatoes right now.

This is about half of my backyard. We had a really wet, cool spring which helped everything along. You can see I have structures, fences and trees to work around.

All four of my beds face East/West on their longest side. I have beds that are about 8 feet across and 16 feet long. This works well for me. However, if I want to grow something tall in the bed closest to the fence I need to be aware of the position of the rays of the sun.

This is the bed I'm now using for beans. I ended up with about 60 ears of corn out of this bed. As you can see the corn just grew taller the closer it got to the fence. A bean trellis won't work well like that.

My goal was to use simple shapes to maximize sun exposure in that bed. There's a book I really love called Gaia's Garden. It talks about how to maximize growing space by using an undulating line for your beds. The more curves you add, the more growing space there is. It recommends something that looks a lot like the natural edges of streams or lakes. The paths are curled in on themselves in some versions. This is an example:

So with shape planning in mind, I sat down and thought about my planting options (I originally drew them out on paper.) I was trying to see shapes that would be the best use of sun rays to avoid over-shading at the back of the bed while using the most growing space within the bed. Since my raised beds are rectangular, I needed to find angles that would work with that particular shape.

I had a few theories I tried out, but the use of the bed was not optimal. I kept trying, and finally hit on a shape that will increase the planting area while simultaneously increasing the sun exposure. This bed is going to be for several types of beans. These large, lightweight vines need support and that support needs to face the sun as much as possible. I could have planted other things, by height, in the back and front of the beans, but I am happy with what I already have growing and just wanted beans in this bed.

I live in South Texas and we are near a forested area and a park: I have mice, rats, opossums, raccoons and squirrels. (I have even seen a ringtail in the forested area. But they are welcome in my yard since they like to eat mice and maybe they'll skip my veggies.) All of these critters will leave some types of beans alone. But if I want to grow yard long beans (also known as Chinese or asparagus beans) those uninvited guests will eat the plants to the ground. So, for these beans I need to think ahead and fence the bed with hardware cloth. Like this:

If you are going to use this around your garden I suggest 36" to 48" tall x the length it will take to completely surround what you are protecting. Usually that's 50-100 foot rolls. Mine is 36" and I've never had a problem with anything scaling it.

The small holes in hardware cloth keep even the smallest mouse out of the bed. It's a pain to open and close the hardware cloth to harvest, so I don't use it unless it's necessary. I could always create a separate gate, but that's for a future project. Fencing is also pretty expensive these days. Plus, our heat index for today was 120°F. Even in the morning: I only want to spend the bare minimum outside messing with my beds. I have an unopened roll of hardware cloth and I will be running it around all the beds, as a permanent fence, this fall.

These beds will need that fencing to successfully grow the yard long beans. The privacy fence that the bed is up against will stop the evening sun, and shade anything planted in the back of the bed. It was time to deploy the drawing I made for the bean supports.

This is what I settled on after doodling out several initial ideas. The yellow is the angle most of the sun is coming from. I use garden poles and string to grow beans. Each of the directional turns in the drawing will be a pole. Also, I have enough poles for this version so I don't need to go buy more. The zig zag pattern will be filled with string line. As you can see, compared with other ideas I had, this will allow for the most sunshine across the most distance and no plant will be lost to too much shade.

How to draw sun/shade ratios according to Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway. Great book. I really recommend it.

There's always something to improve out in my garden. I am happy to have figured out a small concept to increase my potential yeilds. If you have limited space and you are looking for an answer to harness the most of your availabile sun/shade ratio, I hope this idea helps out!

If you have obstacles on your property (like trees, buildings or fences) there are other shapes to consider when you are evaluating sunshine and bed angles. Thinking ahead and drawing it out, can really help your gardening success.