Hey All,
I grow roses in containers here in Houston, and while they do love our sunny days (when its not busy raining) they will become wilted and browned out. I noticed at nurserys and garden centers around the city, they have this black netting material used to filter out the sun. I did a bit of research on this stuff, and it turns out there's quite a few different grades, colors, and materials that can be used. What I'd like to know is how do you know which percentage to use for a given environment/crop and where can I get some of this stuff in Houston?
Thanks Guys
Filtering the sun with garden shade cloth
I've never used shade cloth but take a look at these:
http://www.growerssupply.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ExternalPageView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&division=GrowersSupply&pageKey=EXTERNAL_PAGE_16
Dancey that is a great website, I love how it cross references plants w/ amount of shade required.
Ken, I experienced the same when I had roses potted up. They need more water because they are contained, yet it is so easy to overwater to point of rotting. Once I took them out of pots and transplanted inground in the sunniest part of my garden, browning was gone. Sorry, I don't have a suggestion for you if transplanting inground is not an option. You may want to post in the Rose Forum, there are a lot of people there who are successful growing roses in pots.
This message was edited Jul 27, 2006 9:46 AM
Ken, before I moved to my house I had a townhouse and roses in containers on the patio. It was totally enclosed (except for the sky, of course) and I put shadecloth over about 3/4 of it. The roses (I had Golden Showers, La Reine Victoria, Peace, Tropicana, among others) would get sun up until about noon, then shade from the cloth the rest of the day, and they did very well. I used the kind that cut (they said) about 70% of the (light? heat?). It made sitting on the patio bearable as well.
Side note -- I watered them every morning, never terribly deeply, and fed them a weak solution every week. I never got tons of blooms, but they did bloom and were pretty healthy.