Shade Cloth

[HighSeas]

I need some shade cloth to cover a section of the roof on my orchid house. But I was wondering if I should get some advice on this first....

Do orchids need UV rays? Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? Thanks!

[RJSquirrel]

All Plants can use most of the colored spectrum, but not UV. UV is invisible. If its invisible how can it be light? Bec its still a photon particle. Then again UV light is used to kill bacteria and microbes. So while directly the plant cant use UV light it can have a direct effect on the plant. When exposed to high levels of UV lights plant increase production of UV blocking chemicals. Plants act differently but exposure to UV light decreases plant height and the size and area of leaves. The impact also affects how fresh leaves and stalks are produced resulting in smaller plants and lower photosynthetic capture area. Plants exposed to excessive UV radiation are not as green as other plants indicating a decrease in chlorophyll.

Depends on how much you want to cover that spot. If its a high light in morning you wont need much if it gets shaded in the afternoons, If it gets high light from the west in the afternoons you will need to block more of it. I'm assuming your greenhouse has an east and west location. I use 70% shaded aluminet cloth bec of full time sun morning until evening. I have to block more of it bec I get so much of it. Started out at 50% earlier in the year when I had tree cover.

[HighSeas]

Thanks RJ! That was helpful. I will have direct morning sun until 1:30pm. Some areas continue to be direct throughout the day but as the sun moves across the sky, I get dappled bright sun from 5:00pm on in a good portion of the house. There are a few areas that remain full sun.

I've been trying to record how the sun affects the orchid house and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some shade cloth. I was looking at the Aluminet on Amazon actually and wondered if it would be a good option....so thank you for responding. It's 70%. How will that affect the temperatures? Is there a noticeable difference?

I read the reviews and they say there is. What do you say?

Also...I live in Central Florida so I still need to retain some heat in the winter. Do you leave yours up year around?

Thanks RJ!!

[RJSquirrel]

I would say that initially no bec Im at 95-100 during the day. BUT without the cloth it might stay well over 100 all the time bec of the energy the light(the UV invisible heating kind of light you cant see) puts out. So the proper answer would be yes it does drops the temperature. Anything that blocks the mean old sun is going to be cooler in that shade. How much temp drop you get is going to be directly related to entropy. As long as there is a difference in temps from the inside to the outside of the house there is work that is being done. Work by the sun trying to heat it up and work by the greenhouse trying to cool it back down. Nature tends to lead to a common ground so the sun is going to heat up the greenhouse until I spend energy trying to stop it from heating up .

And all you asked about was shade cloth