Understand shade cloth & how its colour impacts plants ...
Shade cloths are essential for protecting plants from excessive sunlight, improving the diffusion of light, and ensuring proper ventilation.
When selecting shade cloth, one key factor to consider is its colour. The colour of the shade cloth significantly impacts the growth of plants.
Choosing the appropriate shade cloth colour can positively influence plant health and growth. This blog post aims to provide insights into shade cloth and how its colour affects various plants.
Essential Information About Shade Cloth
Shade cloths can effectively minimize sunburn in plants and reduce the amount of radiation reaching them. This is because shade cloths can reflect air and solar radiation.
Additionally, shade cloths can alter plant appearance, resulting in larger leaves and taller growth in shade-loving plants.
Several factors need consideration when choosing the right shade cloth for your shade house.
What to Consider When Choosing a Shade Cloth?
Fabric Material
Shade cloth can be knitted or woven. Knitted shade cloths, made of polyethylene blend, deflect heat and light, are lightweight, and durable. Woven shade cloths are made of 100% polypropylene, ideal for winter use, and are heavier, enabling more heat retention.
Density Percentage
The density percentage is crucial and depends on the plants you are growing. Here are some general guidelines:
• 30%: Suitable for heat-tolerant plants like peppers, squashes, tomatoes, and flowering plants like snapdragons and geraniums.
• 40%-50%: Ideal for flowering plants like lilies, caladiums, orchids, azaleas, begonias, camellias.
• 60%: Best for sensitive plants like lettuce and spinach.
• 70%-90%: Generally used for ornamental plants like ferns, palms, anthuriums, dracaenas, and philodendrons.
Note: The examples above do not consider shade cloth colour, which we will discuss below.
Colour
Common shade cloth colours include black and green, but white, red, yellow, and blue are also available.
Special aluminet shade cloth is a reflective metalized HDPE knitted screen, used as an alternative to black shade cloths, providing protection against frost and preventing oxidation.
How Coloured Shade Cloth Affects Plants
Choosing a shade cloth colour is more than personal preference. Experts suggest that lighter colours reflect more heat, improving ventilation issues.
White shade cloths reduce light quantity but not quality, promoting faster plant growth than green and black shade cloths, commonly used for flowering plants.
Dark shade cloths absorb heat, while light colours reflect it. Green and black shade cloths act as filters, depriving plants of sunlight. Aluminised shade cloths offer cooling effects, and red shade cloths filter specific light wavelengths, benefiting certain plants.
Using Coloured Shade Cloth for Specific Plants
Research shows that different shade cloth colours have varied effects on different plants:
Blueberries
Shade cloth colours black, grey, red, and white (35% and 50% density) were tested on highbush blueberries. Black cloth reduced PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) by 47%-54%, enhancing vegetation growth. Red, grey, and white cloths reduced PAR by 29%-41%, with minor effects on growth parameters.
Philodendron
Under black, blue, grey, and red cloths, leaf mass was unaffected. Red cloth increased leaf numbers, while blue cloth decreased them.
Peach
Using blue, grey, pearl, red, yellow (30% density), and white (12% density) cloths, all colours showed increased vegetative growth in peach trees.
Orchid
Studies indicate enhanced foliage growth under blue shade cloth compared to black and red cloths. Green cloths generate more heat than white but less than black.
Cast Iron Plant
Cast iron plants produced more leaves under black shade cloth compared to blue, red, and grey cloths. Leaf variegation and green leaf percentages were consistent across all colours, with no significant differences in leaf vase life.
Lettuce
Experiments with black, red, and green cloths (50% density) showed significantly larger lettuce size under red cloth, with the largest stem diameter compared to other colours, making red cloth suitable for lettuce.
Conclusion
Shade cloth can significantly impact plant growth. Therefore, consider factors such as fabric material, density percentage, and colour.
Selecting the right shade cloth colour is vital as it can influence plant health and growth. For high-quality shade cloths, seek reputable providers offering various options. Additionally, you can purchase a shade house with shade cloth for convenience.
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