I 'm gardening in GA. Our summer T has no mercy. + We dont have that reach black soil which Indiana has. And still , I grow, some how, tomatoes, potatoes, pepers, squash, anything I like. In raised beds.

I didnt cover or shade anything. It grows and gives plenty of harvest. All my neighbours had gotten full bags of veggies weekly or sometimes every other day.

Hi avgusta_gw I wish I had wooden raised beds that actually sat on the ground. Mine are plastic stock tanks that are on blocks....so it's harder to keep the soil cooler. When it's really dry, I usually have to water them all almost every day. I'm 76, so I'm a little hesitant to start over with new/different stuff. But I do know that putting compost on the soil, under the plants definitely helps conserve water. If I were about 45 years younger, I'd do the wood raised beds that were open to the ground. But .....I have moles around here and they'd probably eat the roots. haha There's always somethin'. haha With temps around 90, consistently, I do notice that the pole green beans quit even making blossoms. Good luck to all of us.

Eggplants like heat very much. And deer leave them along. Sweet peppers like heat too, but last year deer constantly chew their leaves aswell as tomatoes;. so , I had to cover them with plastic netting.

watermelons grow well in my heat.

Watermelons do grow well in heat and coyotes love them. ):

Last year my cucumbers, watermelons were attacked by deer, but calabasas and winter squashes didnt get their interest. I dont have an idea why they chew watermelon's leaves and do not chew squashes.

I got a new flash for you Klem1. In the United states the birth rate is 1.6 children per woman, well below your two child rule. China and India, the two most populated countries are well below the 2.1 children replacement rate. China's population will be cut in half by 2100 . Many countries have already been working on it for nearly 50 years so crawl out of your cave and read the news. .

The stats show all of north central and south America, all of Europe, and half of Asia have a birth rate below the replacement rate of 2.1 children. It's not something done over night and took decades to get here.

The bad news is most of the middle east and Africa have high birth rates with some exceeding 6 births per woman, like Somalia, which we have no say about. These areas of the world are also the most arid, with the highest birth rate but the lowest carbon footprint. But if left alone Nature can easily control overpopulation of a species naturally.

So Klem1, forget about eugenics or creating a totalitarian state like North Korea, and let nature take it's course. Embrace climate change as the savior of the planet by forcing population control of the most dangerous Animal to ever to walk the earth.

You might want to try insulating the tanks with some sheet styrofoam. Insulation can help keep things cooler in the summer as well as warmer in the winter. Try using white reflective paint to help reduce the amount of sun being absorbed by the tank. Or even a combo of painting the styrofoam.

Shade can be helpful too. A skirting of cloth can help, a piece of wood or other solid tilted up to block a lot of the tank is better. Straw bales to block the sun and insulate can be even better. Or caging up 6" of brown leaves around your tanks.

Shade cloth overhead can be helpful. But it can also depend on what you are growing. With 6 hours of sun, can your plants afford it to be partial shade or diffused sun instead of full on sun?

If y'all pay postage I'll send you something to get rid of those moles, feral hogs. If they haven't rooted them up and ate them by this time next year,you can keep them and I'll refund postage. To show what a good guy I am, I'll pay postage to send you some Fire Ants. Moles that escaped being eat by hogs will be run out of country by ants.

Once ants are set up , nothing can endure to linger in garden , and I do mean NOTHING!

Thanks everyone. I live in the middle of the woods, so I eventually realized that I had to build a good fence. So it's about 4' tall with a solar charger with wire about 2' high. The bottom of the fence is covered in 1" chicken wire. So far, so good, at keeping things out. (Knock on wood!). I have so many raised stock tanks and a cattle panel arch and a big swingset that I grow things up, that I think deer would be afraid to jump over the fence into all that. But.....living in 33 acres of woods, they probably have enough to eat elsewhere, hopefully!