• If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.

shade Can you use weed block fabric as a shade cloth?

Jeffcontonio

Jeffcontonio

I had a partial roll and was wondering if it would work as a shade cloth while hardening off my plants?
27ff029fb0ba5149e6caba0bb0a64aa8.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have used it in past during the early stages of hardening off to provide temporary shade when the sun is at its peak.  Seemed to work fine as a temporary fix.
 
Noah Yates said:
I have used it in past during the early stages of hardening off to provide temporary shade when the sun is at its peak.  Seemed to work fine as a temporary fix.
Click to expand...
How did you progress from the shade cloth to full sun?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I only covered them with shade cloth from about 12 noon to 3 pm.  I use a slightly different technique for hardening off every year.  This season each day for 2 days now I have been letting them get morning sun until noon when they are placed into the shade. Morning sun is the best, because it is cool.  At mid day, the sun is so bright and hot it can scald plant quickly if they are not adapted to UV exposure.  Late afternoon sun is nice and comfortable, but it comes during the peak ambient heat of the day.  Hardening off is all about gradually exposing your plants to wind and sun (UV exposure.)    I recommend 7-10 days of hardening off (gradually increasing the sun to shade ratio) before you leave them in full sun and forget about them.    
 
We're higher in elevation (close to 6000') so we take about 2 weeks to harden off the plants. Shade/wind for much of the day for the first week, then eventually expose them to morning sun for 2-3 hours, then 4-6 hours, then all day/night.
 
We haven't even started yet! We hope to start in a couple of weeks as it's just too cold right now.
 
So the weed block idea was a flop. It filtered out too much light.

I've had my plants out for around 2 weeks now and gradually progressed them into full sun; however, I'm still getting some sun scalded leaves, which surprises me some. I thought they would have been 100% acclimated by now.

I plan to finally transplant them in another two weeks, I'm hoping to have some new growth by then.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
The issues with using it are...
 
It's much less than 50% light passage and since its not designed to be used exposed to light they don't bother making it UV resistant so it will rapidly degrade in direct sunlight.  Many better ways to go.
 
Not to sound too ghetto, but if I only have a plant or two, I just put a patio chair over it so it blocks the sun from roughly 11 to 3, or so. I put the plant straight in the ground where it's going, then add the chair for a few days. Can move the chair slightly to change the hours of shade as needed.
 
Those plastic party chairs work great for me. Yes it's 100% shade for 3-4 hours per day, but my plants do very well with this - as the full (yet gentle) light comes in from the side in the morning and late afternoon.
 
 
 
.
 
mrgrowguy said:
Not to sound too ghetto, but if I only have a plant or two, I just put a patio chair over it so it blocks the sun from roughly 11 to 3, or so. I put the plant straight in the ground where it's going, then add the chair for a few days. Can move the chair slightly to change the hours of shade as needed.
 
Those plastic party chairs work great for me. Yes it's 100% shade for 3-4 hours per day, but my plants do very well with this - as the full (yet gentle) light comes in from the side in the morning and late afternoon.
 
 
 
.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I have around 60 plants this season
 
I put my seedlings (about 60 of them in a 4'x2' tray, planted in individual 3" pots) in direct sun in 90 degree weather under some agricultural burlap for 2 full days of full sun. Then moved to morning sun until noon - and they are doing great! I wanted to get shade cloth but couldn't get a piece the size I needed and and wasn't about to buy an entire roll.
 
Jeffcontonio said:
Unfortunately I have around 60 plants this season
Click to expand...
 

That'd be a lot of chairs.
 
 
If it was a dosen or so, you could stagger them into a few groups, but yeah, won't work with 60 - probably too late in the season to stagger that many
 
 
.
 
Do you have a wall or row of trees to place them beside in order to shade them from afternoon sun?  That also works very well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top