Shading to manage spring greenhouse heat

Added on 22 April 2022

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Shading to manage spring greenhouse heat

By planning to shade your crops, you can spare them, and yourself, the pain of sunburned foliage. Greenhouse operations can get tense in early spring as the intensity of the workload, space crunches, and insect populations all start to build. The increasing intensity of the sunlight can also be anticipated.

Each spring, the team at GGSPro sees examples of sunburned crops during this early spring transition. Below are some tips to help you avoid the setbacks and costs of a sunburned crop.

Timing the Shade

In the early spring, light levels increase rapidly. The more northern the location, the more rapidly the daylength increases over the spring months. At the same time as the duration is increasing, the intensity of the light is also increasing. The cumulative effect is calculated in the Daily Light Integral (DLI). Mapping DLI data by month shows the seasonal progression, as illustrated below from the work of Dr. Jim Faust's lab at Clemson University.