It starts in January right after you throw out all the Christmas catalogs. Then the seed catalogs start arriving and your summer garden takes shape in your mind’s eye. In your imagination, you see bigger, better tomatoes, juicier melons, multiple crops of cucumbers and yummy strawberries. What can you do, at the mercy of your work schedule and limited time as well as our current extreme weather conditions, to make your garden more productive?
Remember a fifth grade science experiment with green or red cellophane where you tested how light affected plants? If you do, you’ll remember that plants require light in order to synthesize their own carbohydrates. The process, known as photosynthesis, utilizes energy from light to convert water and carbon dioxide into its own form of energy. Red and blue light affect plant growth most. Red light in particular stimulates growth and encourages flowering.
So how can you use this science in today’s garden? You can use products like Dalen’s RED Tomato Tray or Better Reds ™ Mulch Film to increase your tomato plant yield by up to 20%-40%. While both products reflect red light back to plants to stimulate tomato growth, the mulch film can also be used for strawberries, melons and other crops that fruit above the ground.
If your goal is to plant earlier and harvest earlier, you need to protect your plants from frost and insect damage. Again, there are so many inventive products available here. One is the Season Starter™ from Dalen which can be fit around vine plants in the early part of the season. You fill the chambers of this multi-channel device with water and you can plant tomatoes up to six weeks earlier since it will warm the area around the plant and keep it growing even in less than ideal weather. Dalen also makes a wide variety of floating row covers and plant bags to not only protect against frost (these simple covers can increase the temperature around your plant by 5 degrees), but also provide a greenhouse/germination effect for growing plants and then protect them when insects arrive. Today’s gardener truly has some scientifically engineered products to help them maximize their investment of time and money.
Read more: How Colored Light Affects Plant Growth | eHow.com
