I finally found a shade cage that works for all of my small plants that need to acclimate to our Hawaiian sun. I've tried a half dozen cages, all of which were problematic and expensive. For about three dollars worth of parts and the shade cloth that moves from plant to plant as each acclimates, I've got one that works.

The tripod shape is stable and can be height adjusted with longer or shorter pieces of pvc pipe.

Three pieces of plastic pvc pipe and three pvc fittings and you can create any width desired.

Wrap the shade cloth around the tripod and clip it to the legs with alligator clips.

Easy, cheap, fast, don't glue the assembly together and the pieces store in the least space possible.

Mike

BEST POST EVER!

Pauleen Sullivan had a simple and elegant shade structure that she put over her younglings. It was made from copper tubing and shade cloth with two legs to be driven into the soil. She had several of them made up and moved them around as needed. They looked good but were quite a bit more expensive than yours and with two legs, were harder to install.

This is a subject i can really relate to. Spent many an afternoon after throwing a new gem in the ground putting up some shade protection. My attempts are not pretty, but do the job...as you can see

NApalm

I found your style of shade cover to be very effective. My cats however found this style to make for ideal napping locations and on more than one occasion managed to stretch the shade cloth down onto the emerging new spike and break it. One more good style that I had to abandon. My tripod has some limitations but my cats can't sleep on them.

Mike

Haha. Well your solution looks to be first class. Bravo