Re: cp's in the desert

John Walker (jrw@soho.ios.com)
Sat, 29 Jul 1995 08:36:07 -0700

>John,
>
> I am in Mesa so it's just as hot as can be. I
>was planing on useing a cover. I'm not sure what the stuff is called but it's
>just a heavy fabric shading. Even most pond plants couldn't take the full
sun here. Do you
>think this would help?

I would use the "window screening" without a doubt. That should take
care of the ultra violet intensity. Also, I plan on trying to acclimate
a VFT or two to the sun over a period of several weeks by leaving them
in the sun for longer periods each day. What I worry about even more
for your bog is the overall outdoor temperature. Books I have read
indicate that the upper temperature limit for VFT's is 98F-100F. As you
know (and lived through I hope) the temperature at the Phoenix airport
in the shade yesterday was 121F!...perhaps others can tell us whether
VFT's can tolerate these kinds of temp's if they are given enough
humidity?
>
>
>>Evaporative coolers loose efficiancy as the humidity goes up so I was
>>worried
>that in an already humid green house they wouldn't cool the air enough
>to
make a
>difference.
>
>The trick with a swamp cooler is to feed it the dry (hot) air from the
outdoors. As long as the swamp cooler pulls in outside air rather than
the humid air inside the green house it will will work efficiently,
although less so during the summer monsoons. Even so, we cool our house
with a swamp cooler during the entire AZ summer and temps never go above
85F for any length of time. This is well within the safe temp zone for
VFT's. Please let me know how your experiments work out and I will do
the same. My wife would love to see me move the whole hobby outdoors!
You can always email me directly if you have a "simple" question
relating to desert growing that you think the entire group might not be
interested in. After all, you are the closest internet desert CP grower
I have yet to learn about.

John Walker
jrw@soho.ios.com