Perhaps it's time for a little shade-house, Cameron.

Here is mine ( picture reposted from below's post) to start the thread with a picture

Get some of those fairly cheap racks from the container store and cover the tops if a hail storm threatens..... something like that ?

Ken I wish I had a shade house.
Ursula that's a great idea. We've had at least 3 hail storms in my area this year. The northern part of the county had grapefruit sized hail two weeks ago. We're still experiencing some low temperatures in the 50s and I think I even saw a 44 for a low this weekend.

Grapefruit size??? And people continue to live there? Insurance must be a bear!

Carol it's terrifying to say the least. We had a bad hail storm in 2016 that punched holes in the siding of our house,ruined the roof, and severely damaged the car. Several years ago I lost my whole houseplant collection to a hail storm. I couldn't imagine losing all of my orchids to another hail storm. I want them to be outside to get the rain and humidity but I'm a bit paranoid from the previous bad experiences.

Totally understandable! We normally get one little (barely pea size) lasting 10 min. hail storm a year. I can't believe folks put up with that kind of devastation. Of course outside is a relative term . Most of us that do grow orchids outside have most of them under some kind of cover, whether it be a tree, awning, shade cloth, or whatever.

Cameron, we never have hail here that I've seen, but my orchids are protected from heavy rain, birds and critters, and flying tree pieces etc. by our pool cage. It is made of window screening, and you can get screening material at HD or Lowe's in a roll for very little money. How about a PVC frame with some window screening attached to it for an awning over your orchids? It reduces the sun's intensity by about 20% but my orchids seem to like that amount of light very well.

Screening material is made of fiberglass or plastic fibers, but you can also get metal screening material - even hardware cloth 1/4in. holes, metal screening - would surely protect the orchids from large hail, but wouldn't impede the light getting to them very much. Again, a simple frame made of PVC would hold it up just fine. Paint the PVC though because it doesn't stand up well to sunlight.

I am not sure my shade-cloth would stand up to grapefruit hail, Cameron. I have lived in the Deep South my entire 75 years and have never seen hail like that. I can sure see your hesitation when it comes to building shade structures. A nice shadehouse can be built fairly inexpensively though. The temperatures that you quote are not even problematical when growing the vast majority of orchids. My orchids have been subjected to the upper 30's this year and they haven't really missed a beat. They are all under trees, under screening (lanai) or under shade-cloth though, so there's little danger of frost.

Nice little Spathoglottis glowing away in the shady garden under the mango tree today. This one has been a stellar performer for years for me, while my several other colors just sort of limp along, and don't bloom much.

I wonder if I could put the shade house under some large trees, that way my orchids would be somewhat protected from any hail storms? I have a lot of left over window screening so that would be perfect. I'll just look up how to build a frame and get some PVC pipe and paint. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we won't have anymore bad hail, but that's wishful thinking. I didn't mean to get off subject from the blooms. Thanks everyone for the advice and ideas.

maybe the forum needs a thread about shade houses? People show photos of their, describe how they made it, how it functions. I don't have a shade house, its not reliably warm enough in winter to just keep plants in a shade house here, that's why I have a greenhouse. But I am interested in the concept of shade houses

I love PVC, you can find all sorts of pieces to make different frames, etc. Here are the plans for a PVC plant light stand but I have also used it as a cold frame and in one case as a protective barrier (from rabbits) with screening over it. I would advise you to use a heavier weight PVC however, I found the 40 to bend too easily with any weight on it. I did buy a a pvc cutting tool as I was making a lot of these for a class I was teaching but a plain old saw will cut the plastic also.
http://www.walterreeves.com/ho...

You are in zone 9a and I'm in zone 9b, so there's a little bit of difference in cold extremes, Gina. I do have a shadehouse but no greenhouse. I wrapped the north and west sides of the shadehouse in translucent plastic in December and removed it in March. All it did was keep winds out of the north from impacting my orchids. It seems that the main plants impacted by cold temperatures here in Vero were some of my bromeliads. Since this was my first winter here, at least I now know which varieties of bromeliads are cold-sensitive and which are not.

Cameron, there's no reason a shadehouse wouldn't work under trees but you might not need the shade-cloth. The leaf canopy might work just as effectively as shade-cloth. The main thing is how much direct sun there would be on that shadehouse in the afternoon. Direct sun in the morning (until 11) is usually safe. The main thing is to protect your sun-sensitive plants from direct sun 11:00 AM till 4:00 PM. At least that's been my experience.

I have used PVC and plastic poly to make what I used to term 'portable greenhouses' before I had my real greenhouse. You can erect them anywhere, and put a portable electric space heater (the kind that blows warm air) under them if need be and save plants from freezing in a pinch

I don't know if it should be called shade houses per se. How about a thread entitled "Summer Orchid Care"? I mean mine would feature wire racks, benches and shade cloth.

Hmm. Need to think on an appropriate title.

We have a new thread and I will certainly change the title for something more fitting!

Also, do you have a picture to add to the first post in this thread? I can only offer pictures of my cage, which isn't exactly a shade house.

Ursula took care of this for us, Bill. She's so pre-active and smart.

The "Summer Orchid Care" wouldn't work for all of us in south, south-central FL and S. CA. Outdoor growing can be and often is year 'round.

I will take an updated photo or two of my shadehouse, now that it has been mounted to an elevated deck and I've constructed a handy-dandy bench to hold additional orchids, when I get back to purchasing more. I have plans to build one more bench and that one will sit along the (southern) perimeter of the shadehouse.

Thanks, Ursula.

She is on top of things! Got to give her props for that!
Great title.
The Orchid Forums are just getting to be more and more informative! Seems appropriate for such a large group of plants with so many different methods on how to succeed in growing them.

There are many ways to built an outdoor growing area. I would think it depends a bit on how permanent you want the structure to be?
My cage was a freebie, it had a previous life as a large tool bin in the basement of a chemical production building, which was demolished. We were allowed to rescue the panels. Now originally they came from wirecrafters.com. My sweet husband and his brother, a retired mason, set it up for me in 2004. I can cover the structure with plastic or tight netting if a late frost or hail threaten. I have done that a few times in the early years.

https://www.wirecrafters.com/p...
https://www.wirecrafters.com/p...

I was looking for a pic of my cage, here is one after I cleaned out the greenhouse for the season.