A 'coolglass' question

For a few (glorious) days, despite some internal shading and much sloshing about of water, my greenhouse got to silly degrees C and the flowers on what would have been the first truss of tomatoes, dried out and died before setting fruit.

I applied 'coolglass' to the outside and removed the internal shading.

Since the summer (you remember it - those two weeks of Wimbledon?) there hasn't been anything like the amount of sun and although the tomatoes have produced much fruit, there's no sign of any ripening.

I know you can - certainly at the end of the season - pick the fruit and ripen it 'artificially' (i.e. by placing it with other fruit which gives off ethylene) but to me at least, toms ripened in this way don't have that special flavour which comes from the sugars developing naturally by exposure to the sun.

So my question is - would it be prudent to now accept the Met office's 'revised forecast' and remove the 'coolglass'? - bearing in mind that a) they might have got it wrong again and we might yet have sun, and, b) since the sun disappeared, so has the 'coolglass' from the garden centre shelves.

 

My greenhouse has not gone over 35 degrees these past few weeks and thats just with plain glass. In the hot days it went over 50. Ive still only got green toms upto yet too.

 

I find the bulk of my toms ripen in august if blight doesnt set in..they are outside.
Most plants will shut down photosynthesis and go into survival mode when the temp gets too high so that can set them back a bit. At 50C (122F) it would be more like a solar cooker than a greenhouse :wink:

 

If we are going to have miserable summers I wonder if some sort of netting will be preferable to Coolglass - easy to remove, and "re-apply" :thumb:

 

cool glass should be wiped off at the end of september to allow enoughf light to reach your plants :gnthb:

 

Thanks to all for the helpful replies.

I did have some netting Kristen, but it was while that was on that we had the very hot weather and although it 'shaded' the plants, it didn't seem to do anything regards keeping the temperature down.

To JWK - I too was looking for something similar, something that you could drape over the outside and pull up or let down fairly easily. Still looking!

I will be leaving the coolglass on for now.