Humidity and your palms

[tropicalb]

For all you guys growing in greenhouses or coldframes:

what are your ideal levels of humidity during the day, and how do you achieve them?

For those who grow outdoors under shadecloth:

do you do anything special to keep humidity levels up during these warm summer months?

[BS Man about Palms]

OK Burt, I'll bite.  I have been concerned, but I have been finding that I'm just close enough to the coast I don't need to worry as much.  I think on the hottest Santa Ana day I've had since I put up the remote sensors here, it was still 12% humidity. Most of the time I'm at 45-70% humidity outside during the day which seems to be about the humidity in my coldframe too!

At night I'm usually in the 80% plus humidity range outside.

[paulgila]

what kind of system do you have to monitor humidity levels,mr.bill?

[BS Man about Palms]

(pohonkelapa @ Jul. 04 2007,11:10)

QUOTE

what kind of system do you have to monitor humidity levels,mr.bill?

Various Oregon Scientific stations and remote sensors around the property and in the house.

When together they read very close, or last time I checked they did.

I can/am monitoring temps/humidity from 6 different locations here.

[Breadfruit Bill]

I run the misters in my shadehouse for 2 minute intervals 3 times a day to cool my palms on hot summer days (june through sept) and that raises humidity about 20% for an hour or so at a time...  Usually it 50-60% humidity in the summer so 60% to 80% is about where it fluxuates to and from.

[iwan]

(PiousPalms @ Jul. 04 2007,13:03)

QUOTE

I run the misters in my shadehouse for 2 minute intervals 3 times a day to cool my palms on hot summer days (june through sept) and that raises humidity about 20% for an hour or so at a time...  Usually it 50-60% humidity in the summer so 60% to 80% is about where it fluxuates to and from.

It helps to have native humidity.  It was 109F/19%RH in my shade house at 4PM.  I ran the sprinklers for ten minutes and the temp dropped 20F and humidity went up to 43%.  Ten minutes later the temp was back up at 99F/29%RH.

[RadPalms]

Do you run the water straight from the tap to your misters or do you start with a filtration system first????  I am needing to run misters in my greenhouse...

[Breadfruit Bill]

Agreed, relative humidty helps a huge bit.  It's cumbersome to recreate mother nature.

I just run tap...  Nothing fancy, every 3-4 years or so it looks like I will need to remove all the heads and give them a good soaking to remove all the buildup.

[Neofolis]

My polytunnel is generally at 50-60%, which is a little lower than I would like, but seems to be acceptable to both the plants that like and the plants that dislike humidity.  Although the humidity outside the tunnel is often higher, the tunnel is a higher temperature, so relative humidity is lower even with more moisture in the air.  I do have problems on warm days when the sun is out, because the temperature gets higher and humidity drops quickly.  I was running misters which kept the humidity up to 70-90%, but using my mains water left calcium deposits all over the leaves.  I now have an RO system to overcome this, but I still need to find an appropriate pump, as I no longer have the mains pressure available if I am using stored water.  I do some manual misting occasionally, but, although this can raise the humidity by 20% or more, it drops very quickly afterwards, because of the lower moisture of the air outside the tunnel.  Once I have a pump sorted, I will control the misters, either with a humidistat or a thermostat, although I may just use a burst timer to have the misters on for a few seconds each minute.

I have a fan in the polytunnel as well, which also reduces humidity and when it is really hot I have to turn the fan up further, further reducing humidity.  It is still preferable to opening the door, which makes humidity plummit.  The fan is currently on permanently, but I will probably get a cooling stat, so that it comes on when the temperature reaches a certain level and switches off again after the temperature has fallen a few degrees.  This should help to maintain a higher temperature, higher humidity and reduce electricity consumption and they only cost about £30.00, so I can't think why I haven't already bought one.

[BS Man about Palms]

Corey-

Be careful, air movement helps cut down on fungus and pests too.

[Neofolis]

That's part of why I have the fan going Bill, also to keep the air temperature consistant through the polytunnel, but I don't think it needs to be on constantly to achieve either goal.