6 Best Uv Resistant Windbreak Nettings For Tomatoes That Prevent Common Issues

You’ve spent weeks nurturing your tomato seedlings, and now they’re finally in the ground, reaching for the sky. Then a surprise summer squall rolls through, snapping a main stem. Or worse, a relentless heatwave leaves you with beautiful red fruit marred by ugly, white, papery spots on the shoulders. These are the moments that test a gardener’s resolve, but they are almost entirely preventable with the right physical barrier.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you!

Protecting Tomatoes from Wind and Sun Scorch

Wind and sun are two of the biggest threats to a healthy tomato crop. Strong winds don’t just risk breaking stems and branches; they also shred leaves, damage delicate blossoms, and dramatically increase moisture loss from both the plant and the soil. This constant stress can stunt growth and reduce your overall yield, even if the plant survives.

Sun scorch, or sunscald, is a different beast. It happens when the fruit is exposed to intense, direct sunlight, essentially cooking the skin and the tissue just beneath it. The result is a sunken, discolored, and often leathery patch that ruins the fruit. While dense foliage helps, modern tomato varieties bred for fruit production sometimes have sparser leaves, leaving them vulnerable, especially in the hottest parts of the day.

The solution is a physical barrier that can diffuse both threats. A good UV-resistant netting acts as a windbreak, slowing down damaging gusts without stopping airflow completely. It also serves as a shade cloth, filtering the harshest rays of the sun to prevent scalding while still allowing enough light through for photosynthesis. The trick is choosing the right material for your specific conditions.

Agfabric Netting: Top Pick for Durability

When you need a windbreak that can stand up to a real beating, Agfabric is the answer. This isn’t flimsy material; it’s typically made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) that feels substantial in your hands. Its primary advantage is its long-term UV stabilization, which means it’s designed to endure season after season of sun exposure without becoming brittle and tearing.

For hobby farmers, investing in gear that lasts is crucial. Agfabric often comes with reinforced, taped edges and brass grommets, making it incredibly easy to secure to T-posts or a wooden frame. This robust construction means you can pull it taut to create a firm wall against prevailing winds without worrying about it ripping at the connection points. This is a set-it-and-forget-it solution for the season.

While it excels as a windbreak, Agfabric is also sold in various shade percentages (typically 30-50%). This makes it a fantastic dual-purpose choice for gardens that face both high winds and intense sun. You get the physical strength to stop the gales and the light diffusion to prevent sunscald, all from a single, durable product.

Tenax Hortonova for Support and Protection

Sometimes the best tool for one job is actually designed for another. Tenax Hortonova is a classic trellis netting, used for supporting climbing plants like cucumbers, beans, and indeterminate tomatoes. Its genius lies in its dual-purpose application as a passive windbreak. When you weave your tomato plants through its grid, the netting itself provides a sturdy backbone against wind.

The grid structure doesn’t block the wind entirely but instead breaks up strong, solid gusts into smaller, less harmful eddies. This is a huge benefit, as it maintains crucial airflow through the plant canopy, which helps prevent fungal diseases like blight. You’re supporting the plant and protecting it from wind with a single installation step.

This approach is a perfect example of working smarter, not harder. However, it’s important to understand the tradeoff: Hortonova offers almost no sun protection. It is an ideal solution for climates with significant wind but less risk of intense, scalding sun. If your main problem is wind-related stem damage and flower drop, using this as your trellising system is an incredibly efficient strategy.

VIVOSUN Shade Cloth: Preventing Sun Scald

If your primary battle is with the sun, VIVOSUN shade cloth should be at the top of your list. This brand specializes in light-filtering fabrics, and their products are a go-to for preventing sunscald on tomatoes and other sensitive vegetables like peppers. The key is selecting the right shade percentage for your needs.

For tomatoes, a little shade goes a long way. Too much can inhibit fruit production and ripening. A 30% to 40% shade rating is the sweet spot. This density is enough to block the harshest midday and afternoon sun, effectively preventing the fruit’s skin from overheating and scalding. It also helps lower the ambient temperature around the plants, reducing overall heat stress and water demand during a heatwave.

VIVOSUN cloth is typically lightweight and features a lock-stitch knit that resists fraying when cut. This makes it easy to drape over a simple hoop structure or attach to existing stakes. Its main purpose is sun mitigation, so while it will offer some minor wind resistance, it shouldn’t be your first choice for a dedicated, high-wind barrier.

Coolaroo Shade Fabric for Ease of Installation

Coolaroo has built a reputation on user-friendly, high-quality shade fabrics. What sets it apart is the "knitted" construction of the material. Unlike a woven fabric, this breathable knit allows heat to escape, preventing the buildup of a hot air pocket underneath the cloth. This is a critical feature for maintaining good air circulation and keeping plants healthy.

This fabric is often sold in consumer-friendly, pre-packaged sizes with finished edges and grommets already installed in the corners. This makes it incredibly simple to deploy. You can quickly rig it up on a hot morning using some posts and bungee cords and take it down just as fast when a cloudy spell moves in. This flexibility is invaluable for the hobby farmer who needs to adapt on the fly.

While excellent for sun protection, the breathable nature of the Coolaroo fabric means it’s less effective as a primary windbreak than a denser material like Agfabric. Think of it as the perfect tool for providing temporary, targeted relief from the sun with minimal fuss.

BeGrit Netting: A Dual-Purpose Windbreak

Here’s another case of using a product for more than its advertised purpose. BeGrit is often sold as bird netting or insect netting, featuring a very fine mesh. While its main job is to keep pests off your precious fruit, that same fine mesh is surprisingly effective at slowing down the wind.

The netting acts like a sieve for the wind, breaking its momentum and reducing its velocity significantly by the time it reaches your plants. Because the threads are so thin, it blocks a negligible amount of sunlight, which is a huge advantage in areas that get a lot of wind but may not have consistently intense sun. This makes it a perfect choice for coastal gardens or open fields where breezes are constant.

By installing BeGrit netting, you are solving three problems at once: you’re stopping birds from pecking your ripe tomatoes, excluding larger insect pests, and providing a gentle but effective windbreak. For the resource-conscious farmer, this kind of multi-functional gear is a clear winner.

Gardzen Shade Cloth for Balanced Light Levels

Gardzen offers a solid, no-nonsense line of shade cloth that hits a great balance between performance and value. They provide a wide spectrum of shade percentages, allowing you to fine-tune the amount of light your plants receive. This is particularly useful if you’re growing several different tomato varieties with slightly different needs.

One of Gardzen’s strongest features is its construction. The lock-stitch knitting and taped edges make it highly resistant to tearing and unraveling, even when you cut it to fit a custom-sized raised bed or cold frame. This durability is essential when you’re creating a semi-permanent structure that needs to last the entire growing season.

This is the kind of product you buy when you need a reliable, adaptable solution. It may not have the extreme durability of some heavy-duty commercial brands or the plug-and-play ease of others, but it provides excellent, balanced protection from the sun and moderate winds without breaking the budget. It’s a dependable workhorse for the garden.

Choosing the Right Netting Density for Your Zone

There is no single "best" netting; the right choice depends entirely on your specific pressures. Don’t just buy the highest-rated product. Instead, diagnose your primary problem and choose the tool designed to solve it.

Use this simple framework to guide your decision:

• Primary Problem: High Wind, Moderate Sun. Your goal is to slow the wind without blocking precious light. A trellis netting like Tenax Hortonova or a fine pest netting like BeGrit is ideal.
• Primary Problem: Intense Sun, Low Wind. Sunscald is your enemy. You need a dedicated shade cloth like VIVOSUN or Coolaroo with a 30-40% shade rating.
• Primary Problem: Both High Wind and Intense Sun. This is the toughest challenge. You need a durable, dual-purpose product. A heavy-duty option like Agfabric with a 40% shade rating is your best bet, as it can withstand the wind’s force while also providing sun protection.

Finally, think strategically about placement. You rarely need to build a four-walled fortress. Observe your garden. Does the wind always come from the west? Does the afternoon sun beat down from the southwest? Often, a single, well-placed wall of netting is more effective and economical than attempting to cover everything. Pay attention to your land, and it will tell you exactly what your plants need.

Ultimately, protecting your tomatoes comes down to matching the right material to your specific environment. By understanding the tradeoffs between wind resistance, shade density, and durability, you can move beyond simply reacting to damage and start proactively creating the ideal microclimate for a bountiful and unblemished harvest.