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Garden Experiments

Using Mirrors / Aluminium Foil

10 years ago

Hi There

I have a passage in my 1 floor apartment building which receives around 1-2 hours of direct sunlight from 10 AM to 12 PM. I was thinking of getting more sunlight to this area by placing aluminium foil / mirror on the roof (2nd floor) in such a way so as to reflect more early morning light on the plants placed in this passage. My intention is to get atleast 3 more hours of light so that I can grow tomatoes / cukes / other summer veggies.

Has any one done any sort of experiments? Would appreciate if you could share some tips etc.

A breif intro of mine: I live in Saudi Arabia and have developed a recent interest in gardening. Live in an apartment so dont have much garden place and therefore started off with Container gardening on roof top. It worked fine in the Winter months (from Nov to Feb) and since now the summer months are approaching it is going to get real hot on top. This passage that I am thinking is going to be cooler.

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Comments (2)

darnrus
9 years ago
Foil or mirrors might work but have you thought about supplementing with grow lights. We are trying the 255 LED panels that require only 14 watts at 120 volts. If you get some sun light these may help at other times. We are trying them to see if we can get more photosynthesis on the north side of our plants when the sun goes low in the winter. See our greenhouse at greenhouseinthesnow.com

Here is a link that might be useful:
greenman62
9 years ago
Saood
some plants dont mind the heat.
i know cactus dont have you tried dragonfruit ?
my papaya seem to like it here and its 92F

You can also pain the containers white or silver to keep them cool.
and use a piece of plywood painted white, to shade the container.
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