Shade cloth provides shade, Aluminet provides shade AND heat reflection. In your situation I would go 100% Aluminet. I found it very easy to work with and would highly recommend it, I will probably never go back to shade cloth again. The cheapest place I found is: http://www.shadeclothstore.com/deptsaluminetshadecloth.html I ordered it without grommets and bought grommets from: http://www.shadeclothstore.com/products/clipitsplasticgrommets__aluminetshadecloth.html These grommets worked fine and are dirt cheap. One of the better foggers is the minifogger by Hydrofogger: http://www.hydrofogger.com/inc/sdetail/152 You are probably going to need a swamp cooler. I experimented with mine in different positions and found that it worked best for me if it was sitting on the ground (1" off cement) and blew the cool, moist air under the benches. 2 fans create a circular air movement under the benches, there is an additional fan at bench level. Air moves up through the plants and leaves the greenhouse through a generous 2' x 1' opening at the highest place of the green house. With these measure I keep the temp below 80 even on the hottest days in Southern California. This describes the situation in the 'Cold Greenhouse'. My solution for temperature control for the 'Hot Greenhouse' is to make it into a lath house during the summer month. I don't need a greenhouse in the summer, only in the winter, so I constructed a convertible structure which will be a heated green house in the winter and an open lath house in the summer. The top 2' of 3 of the walls are hinged and can open up. 12' x 14' of space has 36' of 2' panels open during the hot months. That, along with fans keep the temperature at the ambient backyard level. As it gets colder in the fall I will begin to close these panels and eventually the heating system will kick in. I would like to tell you that with these open walls, no swamp cooler is necessary but cannot say so as I have another factor in play. The 'Hot' and the 'Cold' greenhouses share a dividing wall and the air from the cool side is exhausted into the hot side thus adding cooling and humidity to that side. I believe that with the open walls I probably would not have neede a swamper but am not 100% sure. Good luck, you'll have a lot of fun. Nick

You can continue to put your dark colored shade cloth on the inside and I will continue to suspend a white one over my GH and we can both be happy. Do you always put words in other people's mouths? I never said such a thing, and I don't see anyone else saying the same thing? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I prefer: You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. My point was simply that at least here, aluminet is about ten times more expensive than shadecloth, and there has been no compelling evidence that it is better. (no, neither SHOUTING nor 'I've always done it that way' are compelling evidence) I ask 'why bother?'. Does aluminet last longer than shade cloth? scratch less? weigh less? Are there any good reasons to use it besides being shiny? I would guess that it is more likely to scratch as aluminium is harder than polycarbonate, whereas shadecloth is made from polyester or PET. (From memory, aluminet does scrunch up well removing the need for a rolling mechanism, but then, even time I've seen it used, it was used on the inside - maybe it degrades faster in UV or something) Clavero: good idea. be persuaded by facts, not by who says what :)

After trying 30%, 47% and 63% on my shade houses, my best results have been with the 47%. The 30 is not enough to get markedly lower temps, and the 63 cuts the light to much, slowing growth of most of my plants. For my greenhouse, I have 3 panels that each fit the north/south walls, and they are 30,47,63%. I move the shade panels around, south side and north side, depending on the season. Right now the 63 is on the south and the 47 on the north (outside temp. today = 108 F.)

It may be the trees are planted in the ground as ours are and they are 12' tall. We are in Western Nebraska so are at about the same level for sunshine as NJ. I would look into the ventilation of the greenhouse. Are the vents close to the highest point in the house? We use geo-thermal to heat and some cooling our "greenhouse in the snow". Depending on the greenhouse size this is very economical but the house has to be pretty large to make it feasible to use geo as the underground tubes need to be at or over 200' in length.