[Market-farming] Black Plastic Mulch Overheating

lucy Owsley boulderbelt at voyager.net
Thu May 8 06:48:56 EDT 2008


I believe we get better yield with black than red. Used red for about  
5 years and did not see much difference. So now we use black  
landscape fabric on our maters, peppers and eggplant. The landscape  
fabric allows a lot more air and water to get to the soil and last 10 
+ seasons vs one season with the red IRT plastic mulch (actually the  
plastic itself will last 5+ years as long as it is not removed as I  
found out by visiting the farm where we started market farming and  
noticing the IRT we laid down for strawberries in 2001 is still  
there. But if we were to try and take it up it would stretch and rip  
making it about impossible to use again)

We have not had much of a problem with black plastic overheating the  
soil but we have had it kill seedlings that get shocky and droop onto  
the plastic so we take small handfuls of straw, grass clippings or  
soil and put that where the seedlings are drooping so they are on a  
cool substance and not the hot plastic. As long as the seedlings do  
not touch the plastic they are good to go.


Lucy Goodman	
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com




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