Annuals & Perennials

Retractable roof houses are a fantastic tool for growers of annual and perennials since the roof can be closed to protect the crops from adverse weather conditions but retracting the roof when outdoor weather conditions are ideal ensures that the plants are properly acclimated to the outdoor environment. Exposing the plants to outdoor conditions helps:

• prevent stretching of plants
• prevent foliar diseases like botrytis
• reduce insect pressure
• eliminate burning of plants burn when they are moved outside

Easier to induce dormancy

Many growers using conventional greenhouses have had to start to shut down the plants weeks earlier simply to ensure that the plants have gone dormant before the onset of cold temperatures. Plants can be more effectively induced into dormancy in a retractable roof greenhouse because average leaf and soil temperatures can be easily lowered. Growers who can retract the roof have found that they can extend active growth until later in the fall by several weeks to increase plant size and then shut down plants quickly by dropping average temperatures.

Growing plants in a retractable roof allows them to be grown hardy throughout the growing process instead of growing them “soft” and then “hardening them off” prior to shipping.