shading a greenhouse

A few years back I wrote an article for The Growing Edge magazine on a fun greenhouse shading system that I’d devised using plywood sheets cut into interesting shapes. I was trapsing around Google Books and ended up googling myself. (Admit it, you google yourself too!) What should run across but the article I wrote, reprinted in a “best of” anthology. You can click here to see the entire article reprinted in the book.

The reprinted article has my shop drawings but doesn’t have the photos of the complete project. So here’s an idea of what it looked like when I was done:

greenhouseshading.jpg

As a post-postscript to the project, if you do attempt doing this, use wider rabbets than shown in the article. It lets you attach the individual shade pieces more securely than I’d shown. Otherwise the panels start to fall apart as the pieces swell in response to wet weather–nothing you want to have happen after investing some time in making your panels! As cool as it looked, my underengineered panels only last about 3-4 years. Using wider rabbets and plywood thicker than the minimal quarter-inch stuff would have made them last much longer.

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