Do plants prefer certain colours?

emiff6

Davesnave wrote: »

...The European Plant Combinations Act could be a step towards recognising botanic rights, ensuring that certain of the most harmful groupings are banned. I for one would love to see petunias, bizzy lizzies and lobelia kept well apart, or only planted in rear gardens of consenting adults away from public thoroughfares.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I shall never again swear at my miserable snivelling seedlings when they refuse to grow properly!

Davesnave

Lotus-eater wrote: »

I've had a little look at the info about this and it doesn't look promising tbh.
Not enough to make me try it anyway.

If you provide close to ideal conditions in all other respects, the effects seem to be pretty minimal:

'One thing that seems to emerge from the discussions is that the value of colored mulches at least, if not all mulches, decreases as conditions more nearly approximate ideal for the plant in question; in other words, they help make up for deficiencies, and probably wouldn't have much effect in a perfect garden.'

The other question is where to source these coloured mulches, and having located them, what they'd cost. A slightly smaller yield might still seem the most MSE option.

sirbrainy

Plants can't see lol

They can of course respond to different heat retention/ different insects etc caused/ attracted by various colours close by

peter_the_piper

They can, theoretically react to different wavelengths of light in different ways.
http://www.lightinglab.fi/enlighten/publications/internetui_akvile.pdf

Lotus-eater

Davesnave wrote: »

If you provide close to ideal conditions in all other respects, the effects seem to be pretty minimal:

'One thing that seems to emerge from the discussions is that the value of colored mulches at least, if not all mulches, decreases as conditions more nearly approximate ideal for the plant in question; in other words, they help make up for deficiencies, and probably wouldn't have much effect in a perfect garden.'

The other question is where to source these coloured mulches, and having located them, what they'd cost. A slightly smaller yield might still seem the most MSE option.

I read about the fact, that the tests that have been done, are on plants which are metres apart, so the mulch would have a bigger effect than on plants here (the tests seem to all be in the USA) that are jammed into a greenhouse.
It seems that if you take this sort of thing into account, the yield may increase by a couple of percent. Hardly worthwhile.

And as Peter says, blue is supposed to be better for plants anyway. The idea that the tomato plant sees the colour red and sees a competition risk, thus fruits heavier, is I think, a non starter.

Lotus-eater

aliasojo wrote: »

I read that you should grow marigolds with tomatoes but it's to do with pest control, not colour.

You should always grow french marigolds with tomatoes. Very very good.

emiff6

peter_the_piper wrote: »

We grow bedding in a blue tunnel, supposed to let more of a certain wavelength of light through. Can't say thay grow any better than those in the opaque plastic. What it does do is to make it quite strange when you go out as your eyes get used to the blue and react to the sunlight.

Your post stirred dim memories of school biology lessons (I'm talking back in the dark ages here). I'm sure we did an experiment growing seeds under different coloured glass - don't know what, but probably beans - and the ones under blue glass grew best.

Something to do with light wavelength and what colours plants absorb/reflect, but I'm blowed if I can remember any more than that.

peter_the_piper

Unfortunately when I was at school (Dickens era) only the girls did biology and as it was a boys only site we had to do physics.

Davesnave

The only thing about school biology I can remember now was the lady who came to teach it. She was young, passably pretty and drove a motor scooter, which for us Mods, was the ultimate in cool.:cool:

We rather hoped she might introduce some interesting human biology, but I think it was more of the same; amoebas, rabbits and bloody C6H12O6...

....which is where we came in I think!