Hi Earth Sister!

Could you wrap heavy duty alumium foil around the Rubbermaid feed troughs to see if it would deflect the light and the heat? Well, I suppose it might reflect enough light to start some grass on fire, so maybe that wouldn't work. I haven't tried it. How about something sturdier than burlap and maybe less expensive like a brown tarp? I think the row cover might work, but it degrades when exposed to lots of UV rays, so you'd be shortening the life of your row cover, although I am not sure by how much time the life of it would be shortened. If they make a shiny aluminum house wrap, you could use that, but it might be more costly than the burlap would be. Old white bedsheets would work if you happen to have some of them.

You maybe could use plywood to build boxes that sit around the part of your troughs that face the sun and leave a few inches of air space between the troughs and the plywood? This would be an especially economical solution if you have plywood scraps stashed away somewhere. I've seen people use cardboard as a shield around containers, but it only works until the cardboard blows away or sort of dissolves after a lot of heavy rain. (Of course, it might not rain again this summer, so that might not be an issue.) Or, use a paint made for painting plastic to paint the troughs white.

Sometimes, when I have grown sweet potatoes in a round galvanized metal stock tank, I have surrounded the stock tank with smaller containers of flowering plants so that the bulk of the sunlight was hitting the flowering plants' containers, and not the sides of the stock tank. Once the sweet potatoes hit a certain point and have lots of vines, I let those cascade down over the outside of the stock tank and provide shade for its sides.

I hope you find a way to keep your sweet potatoes cooler and happier.

Dawn

I've also considered using those reflective windshield covers. Those run about $10 each.......and duct tape. For real. Duct tape fixes anything.

Unfortunately, DH cleaned out his stash of wood scraps. I considered hay bales but they just give ticks a whole neighborhood to breed and they would take up the space to move around in that part of the garden.

Maybe I could find some old sheets at the Thrift Store........

A light colored latex paint might help?

They sell those mylar emergency blankets that are reflective. They're about $5 and bigger than windshield shades. I don't think they would be reflective enough to start a fire. I am using gray weed cloth for sunshades this year. It's pretty cheap and works about like a sheet.

use pvc and make hoops over your container then put shade cloth on it or you could put old sheets. Attach them with short strips of old garden hose slit down the side. Or you could plant okra around them for shade