Would the solar blanket reduce the sunlight to the point that the plants will suffer? If so, is there an alternative to the solar blanket that will make sure that plants get their sunlight without the heat of the sun coming into the house?

In case anyone else enjoys tent camping in the summer, at least up until the point your tent becomes suffocating as the sun rises, I will explain how we do this with our tent. We took an old sheet and some of these reflective blankets and laid them against the fly cover of our tent, and traced the sections of the fly according to the seams of where the poles fit. Then we cut identical panels of both the sheet and the blanket that were approximately 1 inch larger on all sides than the actual fly. Then we duct taped the sheet panel to the reflective blanket panel (we taped the edges together. because we camp in an area that often has winds up to 50 mph, we had to make sure there was no space for wind to get between the panels. You may not need to go through so much trouble, but then again, our panels have lasted for 7 years with 4-5 camping trips per year). Without having the fly on the tent, we secured the panels to the tent, reflective side out, with binder clips (make sure to only have the binder clip against the duct tape. The clips can easily tear the reflective blanket). We don’t put the fly on but we do put the tent under a 10×10 shade structure. The temperature remains cool enough that we can sleep until noon, covered, even when the outside temperature gets to 115 degrees.

The downside to this system with desert camping is that the temperature can fluctuate widely overnight with temps being 40 degrees in the dark and then soaring to over 100 in the morning. Well, we solved the problem by bringing a second tent. Our cool, day tent is much smaller than our all purpose tent (which has all of our stuff in it) and the smaller tent only has an airmattress and some bedding in it. We face the two tents opposite each other and then when the large tent becomes too hot, we crawl into the cooler tent.

Incidentally, the panels also work wonderfully for sealing in heat when you flip them(which we learned when we went desert camping in the middle of August only to have highs of 70 and lows of 20). In this instance we flipped the panels around so that the sheet side faced out and the reflective panels faced in, then we put the fly over the panels. Our hot and cold tents were then reversed.

Wish I’d known all of this when I lived in the Hell and Humidity state. Thank you for sharing!

But I was too cheap for tension rods – just put a hook in the wall at each end of the top of the window frame and little rings at the top corners of the blanket. When the sun isn’t beating on the window, I just unhook the rings, loosely fold up the curtain, and stuff it under the nearest chair or table.

I was also thinking that instead of hanging the runner’s blankets from sheets you could sew a channel to insert the curtain rod and roll them up like a valance.

I have a huge west facing picture window that was making an entire section of the house an oven although not anywhere near as hot as Florida.
2+yrs ago I found a snow white queen or king size thermal/felt type blanket on clearance at the dollar store with some flaw that didn’t matter to me. I roughly hemmed the blanket & hung it between the curtains & the window with a piece of wire (the wire is wound around the curtain rod brackets). I originally was going to take it down in the winter however, the added privacy, no one can see inside at night now, has caused it to become a permanent fixture.

I’ve since done this same thing, with a dark blanket to block a street light, in the kids room & drove a long sinker type nail in to the wall near each curtain bracket & used that as the wire anchor. I unwind one end of the wire to change or wash the blanket and I don’t have to worry about the curtain rod falling from the weight. this is more permanent but it stands up to kids moving the blanket to look out the window, hiding behind it, etc.