Suggestions for functional annual vine please?

I put my veggie garden in raised beds on the west side of our white house last year. My veggies fried. Someone suggested that the sun probably radiated off the house so they got a double-dose of heat. Makes sense to me. Since the raised beds are full of soil and in a handy location, I really don't want to move them.

Would it make sense to put a trellis or cattle panel behind them and have a vine grow up? If so, what annual vine would you suggest? I might, at some point, put in a perennial vine, but I want to see if it does any good first. Obviously, it has to be something for full sun. I like Thunbergia, but they seem awfully expensive here for an annual. I like Morning Glories, but I haven't seen any plants - only seed, and it seems a little late for seeds to have a vine of any size.

I was planning to put in my veggie garden next weekend. Do you all have some good suggestions? I have asked plenty of questions!

Hi,
I love in arizona heat and find it hard to believe that your veggies fried in your zone. Have you assessed and make sure that they did not have any diseases?
I am enclosing a thread on man made things to protect plants from our heat. Please take a look and see if you can get any ideas.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/845011/

I also wonder about that--I have a white house and have a number of plants right in front of a west facing (white) wall that gets full blazing sun all afternoon until the sun goes down, and I've never had any trouble at all. I don't have veggies there, but some of the plants I have there will also do OK in part shade, so if sun reflecting off a white wall was going to cause a lot of problems I really think some of them would have fried. I looked it up and it seems like your average summer highs are about the same as mine although of course our overall climate is different so I would think the situation with heat reflecting off the wall would be similar.

Hmmm... Well, our heat index in July and August is quite high and western sun is the worst. That's why the reason proposed made sense to me. If, however, you folks haven't had or heard of that problem, I'll lean toward something else.

The beds were new last year. I made a soil-less mix of peat moss, vermiculite, and organic compost with no animal waste all purchased in bags because I didn't want to introduce anything untoward into food-producing soil. Could I have introduced something anyway?

Could lack of water have been the problem? We were on vacation for about 10 days, giving our son specific watering instructions. When we came home, the bed was dry as a bone, although he insisted he watered. I had my doubts at the time. Everything else recovered, the flower beds on the west side (which aren't as close to the house as the raised veggie beds), and flower beds elsewhere. Could that 10-day stretch of who-knows-what for water in the worst of summer have done them in?

Thanks for the link, lovetropics, but now I'm wondering if heat was the problem after all. Should I perhaps post my questions in the Vegetable Garden Forum?

Erratic watering (or no water?) for 10 days could have absolutely done them in, I think that's more likely than the sun reflecting heat. The white wall/sun reflection could have helped make things worse if it made that bed dry out faster than the rest of the garden though, but if they'd been watered properly I don't think you would have had trouble. Were they looking good before you went on vacation, and then just never recovered from drying out? If so I think you've found your culprit!

well .. it sounds like a watering problem.. the mixseems light ..andwoulddry out quickly.. andperhapsbedifficult to rehydrate in later waterings...
If you thought apile of morningglories would help.. Icouldsend some to you..say 50 or so small sprouts..volunteers of last years Japanese offerings.. ou'd have to pay shipping for them in somesoil... they are small..maybe 4"-6" now.. but it seems a trail with a season of sustained watering would show you if there wasa need for a barrier.. Gordon

definitely sounds like water problem. I check my plants daily in our summers. They will show signs of problems within one day of not getting water in our zone.

Yes... well don't be too hard on him there... he could have indeed watered one morning..and watered the evening of the following day... but that's effectivly two days in between... not to mention the effect of burnout if he watered one time spraying over the plants in the middle of the day. A high wind condition along with high temps can effectivly act like a convection oven on a raised bedas well..
sounds like a drip irrigation system would take alot of the doubts away for a new year... as well as useing less water than spraying on to the bed..
My roof top get up to 145* F starting about 11AM on an 80 *F day..and runs145*F till about 5 PM.. and I only suffer wilt and burnout if I'm not keeping the over all moisture level high..
Gordon

they also have vacation drip systems for temporary purposes. you can consider hooking them up to the water line. I am trying to teach my daughter how to water plants. kids don't realize that the water should go to the roots.!! they tend to spray the plant instead.

Or it could be he watered by running the hose across the bed for a few seconds, just wetting the top layer but nothing to soak in, that doesn't help the plants much but if he's not a gardener, he might have thought that counted as watering.

Well, I feel like a dummy. Okay, I'll just make sure it stays watered this year and see what kind of difference it makes. We've already taken our major vacation for the year, so it'll just be an occasional weekend when someone else (probably neighbor) will be in charge of the water. It definitely WON'T be the son. Last year he was 19, but he still doesn't listen all that well. I worried when I left that he only caught about half the instructions.

Thank you all for your help. I guess it was just pretty basic stuff. :-)

McGlory, about 10 years ago I grew a 100' square potatoe patch with 20 varieties of potatoes. I set up a drip system so each hill had a spagheti tube for water. I will never go back to soaking the foliage during the heat of the day.

Not only do they get sunburned, but there is that accumulation of ungerminated weed seeds between the rows, that are getting the water they need to germinate.

The spaghetti system is cheap, if you ignore all the designer ends they want to sell ya. It is a smart method for weed control, water conservation on a well, and is over all efficient. For about $20 you can get an inline timer that runs all season on two penlight batteries, and is programmable. I set mine to go on for 30 min at 6 am and 6 pm.

This method gives you less weeds, less wasted well water, less scald on foliage, less fungal desease, less other people dropping the ball, carefree weekends, and much more time to take care of the garden.

The battery operated inline hose timer was one of those things I should have done long ago. Frank