Mission: Shade

There are two ways to respond to an unpleasant situation. One is to get angry or despair that what’s happening is outside your power. The other is to treat it as an opportunity to learn something new.

It was the latter response we chose after this month’s heat wave destroyed much of what we were growing. There was, of course, anger and despair but those passed as we started plotting our next steps to avoid a repeat of the devastation.

Step one was the procurement of copious amounts of shading net. The first batch is going straight over the strawberries, poor things, because they’re having a surprisingly hard time in the sun, even though they are close to some natural shade — which appears to be in the wrong place and only falls on them in late afternoon.

The second and much bigger batch will go over the tomatoes next year. We are not giving up on tomatoes. It has now become a matter of pride and yes, it goes before the fall, but we cannot be the only people incapable of growing a decent harvest of tomatoes.

Artificial light control measures aside, there was the much more natural option of trees. We have seen in real time how good natural shade has been for the lucky plants we sowed near trees. We have empirical proof plants that “like sunshine” don’t really like it all the time, at full force.

Walnuts have helped the tomatoes within their shade’s reach survive the worst of the scorching. And to think we worried the plants there won’t grow well. To take advantage of their shade we even transplanted some wild strawberries under one of the walnut trees. Maybe they’ll bear fruit next spring.

Pictured, due to the photographer’s very limited talent: two small walnut trees in the middle, massive but unfortunately located apricot tree to the left and front, and the pomegranate tree that keeps trying to regress to a bush but we’re fighting it to the right.

The pine we last winter saved from the processionaries has also done an excellent job of protecting some of our food supply. Some, but not all.

Then there’s the jojoba tree that has become the best friend of our aubergines. They are not exactly growing fast but they are alive, and that’s more thanks to the jojoba shade than regular watering. Jury’s still out on whether they would do anything productive but they are alive and that’s a small victory.

Incidentally, the jojoba is springing offshoots everywhere in a three-meter radius and they’re seriously annoying (they’re spiky) so we’re cutting them. Except we’re going to save some to plant at strategic locations for future shade, even if we don’t eat the fruit — which is superhealthy and quite tasty. We just never get to it.

We also had the opportunity to turn a defect into an effect, or more precisely shade. If you remember, last November we had an epic battle with a mulberry not-exactly-tree that had spawned roots far and wide right where we wanted to have veggie beds.

The battle ended with a “To be continued” because there was another mulberry that, at the time, we planned on digging out. This month’s lessons in shade changed our minds. We are keeping that mulberry and we’re shaping it into a tree.

Mulberries have lovely large leaves that cast wonderful shade over, as it happens, a set of veggie beds that could definitely use it. And they grow fast. All we had to do was cut off all the shoots but the tallest and wait. Those massive roots will do the job. (Ignore the vine. The vine’s too big to kill and it also offers some shade, unruly and chaotic as it is.) Left, vine, right, mulberry.

Figs are another species that does really well on the shading front. How lucky for us that Cris decided to put a branch he’d cut from the main tree in a jar of water. Because it grew roots and is now leafing nicely. When the time is right, after the summer heat, this branch will be placed at another strategic location and with some more luck turn into a tree.

We are also planning more fruit trees but not pinning any hopes on them. They grow slowly, so it would take them ages to become shade-casters of any meaningful scale. So we’re considering maples as support shade-casters. They grow fast — we’ve seen them grow — and they’re quite beautiful to look at. The fight against unabated sunlight is not over.