Thin Air Harvest Practical gardening for the high, dry West

Weather and wildlife

Wind in the garden: siting, staking, and shelter

Porous windbreaks, low staking, and where to put the vegetable bed so spring wind does not sandblast transplants.

By the Thin Air Harvest editorial team. Updated November 1, 2026.

Wind is the Western weather that never looks like an emergency and still decides whether the garden works. It sandblasts transplants in May, it blows straw into the next lot, it dries a raised bed in an afternoon, and in winter it desiccates evergreen foliage while a chinook is pretending to be spring.

The Colorado Vegetable Guide names high wind as a normal feature of spring and fall, often with the thunderstorms that run from April into September. Protection is siting first and structures second. A windbreak that is a solid wall is a common way to make the problem more interesting and not better.

Put the beds in the lee, and keep the lee porous

The vegetable garden belongs on the leeward side of the house, a hedge, or a slatted fence, where you still have sun. A south-facing wall gives you the thermal mass University of Idaho describes, on the order of five degrees of frost protection for plants close to masonry, and it gives you a blast of wind around the corners.

Stand in the yard on a windy day before you build the beds. The calm spot and the sunny spot are sometimes the same corner and sometimes not. If you must choose, a slightly shadier bed that does not destroy transplants will outproduce a bright bed you replant twice.

A solid fence or a single row of tightly sheared shrubs forces air up and over, and the air comes down in a turbulent pile a short distance downwind. Snow dumps in that pile. Plants rock in it.

Windbreak design used in NRCS conservation practice favors a porous barrier, roughly half open, which slows the air instead of throwing it over the top. The calmed zone extends downwind well past the fence itself. A published multiple of the fence height is not something to copy from a blog onto your lot line.

Walk the wind and see where the plants stop rocking. A slatted snow fence, a hedge that you can see through, or a row of mixed shrubs with gaps will calm a garden. A stockade fence with no gaps will not, except in a narrow strip you should not depend on.

On the high plains the plant materials for that porous row are the ones on the high-plains plant page: serviceberry, chokecherry, native juniper where it is appropriate, grasses at the base. Not a wall of arborvitae. Not Russian olive.

While the shrubs are small, a temporary slatted snow fence can protect both the shrubs and the vegetable beds. Take it down when the plants are tall enough to do the job, or leave a section that protects the kitchen garden if the shrubs are in the wrong place.

Staking trees without making them weak

A newly planted tree in a windy site may need a stake. The stake should be low, about a third of the way up the trunk or lower, and the tie should be loose enough that the trunk flexes.

Flex is how the trunk gets strong. A rigid pole tied at six feet produces a tree that snaps at the tie the season you remove it, or that never develops a taper and leans forever.

Remove stakes after one growing season, or two in a truly exposed site. The planting method, flare at grade and a wide hole, is on the tree page. A tree that rocks because it was planted too deep will not be saved by a taller stake.

Fruit trees on dwarfing rootstocks are the exception that stays supported. The apple page says so. The support is a trellis or a permanent post designed for the tree, not a temporary nursery stake left to girdle the trunk.

Vegetables, covers, and mulch

Young transplants need a week of shelter as much as they need water. A row cover pinned down does double duty: a few degrees of frost protection and a wind break that stops the sandblast.

Take it off during the day once the plants can stand, so they toughen.

A cover that flaps is worse than none. It abrades leaves and then leaves.

Mulch and wind are a paired problem, handled in mulch that stays. If your mulch is in the alley, the bed is also losing water.

Drip under a mulch that remains is the irrigation plan. Wind increases water use. A schedule copied from a calm week will underwater the next week.

Probe the soil. Do not add a fixed extra inch because a blog told you to. Add water when the root zone is drying.

Tall crops need their own plan. Corn in a windy site should be in a block, which the vegetable guide already wants for pollination, not in a single row that falls over.

Stake tomatoes low and early. A cage that is not anchored will depart in a July storm and take the plant with it. Bush beans beat pole beans where the wind is the main summer fact.

Winter wind and chinooks

Winter wind kills by drying. Evergreen foliage keeps losing water when the ground is frozen and the roots cannot replace it. A chinook adds warmth, so the plant wakes up slightly and loses water faster, and then the temperature crashes. The fruit-bud page is the crop version of this.

For evergreens and young shade trees, the practical steps are: water in late fall on a mild day, mulch the soil after it cools, guard thin bark from southwest sun, and do not site a spruce against a reflective south wall.

Idaho’s bulletin is direct about that wall. It helps vegetables and flowers and can disrupt woody acclimation.

A living windbreak that also shades an evergreen’s foliage a little in winter can reduce scorch. A windbreak that dumps a snowdrift on a shrub for four months is a different problem. Watch the first winter and move a valuable shrub in early spring if the drift is crushing it. Snow is insulation until it is a weight.

Rows, corners, and the first week after planting

Orient rows so the prevailing wind does not race down the aisle like a chute. On many Front Range and high-plains lots the strongest spring wind is westerly or northwesterly. A row that runs east-west presents a lower profile than a long north-south aisle if your tallest plants are on the windward edge, but the real fix is still the porous barrier, not a clever angle.

Use the tallest, toughest crop or a strip of cover as the windward edge of the vegetable block, and put the most fragile transplants behind it. Peas on a low trellis can be that edge if the trellis is anchored. A freestanding trellis with no posts in the ground becomes part of the debris.

The first week after transplanting is when wind does the damage you notice and the damage you do not. Leaves tatter, which is obvious. Roots rock in a loose hole, which shows up a week later as a plant that never grew.

Firm the soil at planting, water the planting hole so the soil settles against the roots, and then give the plant a few days of shelter. A milk jug with the bottom cut off is an old individual cloche.

It blows away unless it is pinned, and it cooks a seedling on a bright day unless you remove the cap or lift it. A pinned row cover over a whole bed is less fiddly than twenty jugs. Use the jug only for the one pepper you are babying, and check it at noon.

If a chinook is forecast the day you planned to uncover everything, wait. A warm, dry wind will pull water out of leaves that have been in still air under fabric, and the plants wilt even though the soil is moist. Uncover in a calm morning, not into a gale, and be ready to pin the fabric back down by evening if the temperature is falling.

Checklist

Hail and wind arrive together in thunderstorms. A frame that is tied down handles both better than a loose tarp. The hail page is the companion build.

Sources