Will planter boxes work up against iron wall ?

 


Hi,

I was wondering if this idea would work.

I've got left over palings from building a fence (untreated) and was
thinking of
using them to build a few basic boxes against my shed to
plant things like
herbs, tomatoes etc.

What I'm worried about is heat. Because this side of the shed faces
north, and
during summer in particular there's a lot of heat reflected.
scorching at times.

Would I be wasting my time building boxes ?

I was thinking it may work if I setup a drip feed system of sorts to
keep the
soil moist all the time, which would be easy to do here because
I have tank
water tap right next door, but still thinking there'd be too
much heat, and the
plants will burn (and I'm not into cactii...)

appreciate any thoughts. I'm quite new to gardening.

thanks kindly
Jake


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--
Jake_Darvall

 

Jake_Darvall wrote:

Fence paling timber is probably not rated for direct contact with the soil
so it may only last a year or two is such conditions.


I assume you are in the southern hemisphere for a north facing wall to be
hot in summer.  Where are you?  How hot is hot?  If the summer daily
temperature is 42C then adding reflected heat is probably not good, if it is
22C it might be fine.


The boxes you outline look rather small for the root system of tomatoes and
there is nowhere to support them. The size and good drainage would be OK for
many herbs, cutting greens etc.  Also small boxes will suffer from the same
problem as small pots, they dry out quickly.  A constant drip feed may fix
this but it could be hard to regulate.

David

 

On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:29:31 +0000, Jake_Darvall wrote:



You could always "face" the side of the shed with a few. Or fasten a bit
of shade cloth to the shed and/or cover the plants.
 

Define waste. At the worst, you'll have an idea of what doesn't work.
OTOH, microclimates can produce some interesting results.

 


you have a u.k. address, but we don't know if you are in the u.k.! i'm not,
so i can't answer in an informed way about that.

however, if you're in australia like we are, i'd suggest you're right - the
wall will have sun on it all day & become _much_ too hot. i have a creeper
planted against an east-facing tin shed wall, & it gets too hot to grow (so
i'm going to have to move it) even though the sun has moved over by
lunchtime. north-facing would be simply impossible - the radiant heat is
just too much for most plants.

is there somewhere else you could put the boxes? i reckon wooden plant boxes
look excellent, & you can line them with heavy plastic (with a few holes in
the bottom) to keep them more moist. it's true that planters & pots need
daily watering when it's hot, but most of us have some anyway, because they
have other charms. (and because you may well need to water other parts of
the garden daily in summer anyway.)

you could perhaps keep shadecloth squares to put over the planters each
morning, but i am thinking it's not ideal - it's just a way to make a bad
location better, where moving the planters to a sunny, but not hot, spot
would be the better idea. another idea might be to also make a back board
(of palings) to sit behind. this would not warm up so much, but again,
you're sort of just making do because it's a problem you could have avoided.
kylie

 

On 19/06/2010 10:24 AM, 0tterbot wrote:

I agree....You could however try using some shade cloth over the iron
fence on the sun side....to prevent the sun from heating it in the first
place...