Plastic Mulches

[durandal]

Any recommendations?

I am planning on the slow process of laying the plastic by hand. I have a hiller on a tool bar for the tractor that I use for potatoes and onions, so I can hill the ground prior to mulching.

I was curious if anyone here has used a plastic mulch before and what their experiences are have been.

Many thanks...

Now I am off to clear snow and ice from last night's storm. Fun fun...

[sandbar]

I'd love to hear advice that would make this task easier for me.

Currently, I hill and lay everything by hand.

However, I only hill my sweet potatoes ... nothing else. I'll be using plastic on tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes and melons this year. I'll put it down just as soon as I can plow and disk ... want to get that soil warmed up.

[sandbar]

Anyone use newspaper for mulch?

[sammyqc]

I did last year, and it worked great for keeping the weeds out. As far as I could tell, the plants were happy, and so were the worms. I dug it all in in the fall, most of the newspaper was broken down, and I saw lots of worms. What I did was dig in compost and not quite composted kitchen/yard waste, lots of leaves, then cover with newspaper, about 10 pages thick. Then covered all that with composted manure/soil mix and watered it really well, so it was soaking wet.

This year I'm going to try the red plastic mulch, especially for tomatoes. My hubs bought me a couple rolls last year, and I didn't use them (which he keeps pointing out!!) Think I hurt his feelings, him being so thoughtful about my tomato obsession and all, so I'll give them a try this year. Can't hurt, may even improve production!!

[ohiorganic]

We used to use plastic like IRT (the red for tomatoes, IMO not worth it, black plastic did as well or better yield wise and there is research to back me up on this). Now we use the thick black lanscape fabric. It costs w3x more but lasts at least 5x as long (we have several 5 year old pieces that look like they will last another 5 years).

We lay it all by hand using the BCS tiller to make trenches that the mulch edges go into before being covered with backfill. We do something like 80 50' x 4' beds this way.

the mulch cuts down on weeding something like 90% and landscape fabric breathes somewhat so it does not do as much damage to the soil as regular plastics. it also does not fill up landfills nearly as quickly because we are not throwing it out every 2 years (I realize normal folks will toss their plastic mulch after a year but being conservation minded we tried to get as much as we could out of each piece)

Nolt's in Leola, PA has the best price on rolls of plastic be it for a green house, landscape fabric or rolls of plastic mulches in many colors

Hey Rich, nice to see you here

[durandal]

Small world Lucy!

Similar interests always seem to direct people to similar places.

This is a neat forum....very nice indeed.

[Alan]

Sandbar, I use newspapper here on the farm covered over with a layer of straw. It works really well for most all weeds, retains water well, and provides shelter for beneficial insects while also being bio-degradable and enhancing your soil as it breaks down and the worms and micro-organisms move in to break it down.

You can talk to your local newspaper company and see if they will give you the lefttover rolls of newspaper which aren't long enough to run through the printing machine. Basically they are a big roll of paper which is unprinted and which there might be a couple hundred feet of usable paper on to put to good use. I use two layers covered over by straw. It makes it nice not to have to go back and pick up the plastic or anything like that at the end of the year as well of course and the paper, for me at least, is absolutely free and free of ink!

-alan