Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] herbicides for use in a cut flower garden

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Wiediger, Alison" <alison.wiediger AT hart.kyschools.us>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] herbicides for use in a cut flower garden
  • Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 07:27:44 -0500

I’d like to weigh in on this also.  We trialed it this year.  From what we understand, it is a corn based product, fully biodegradable – not like the photo-degradable petroleum product we used only ONCE many years ago.  In our production system, it starts to degrade in about 45 days and is basically gone in 90.  To succession plant a new crop, all we need to do is pull the drip tape and turn the rest, including crop residues, under.  In our small, very diverse, labor poor (just the two of us) system, plastic that needs to be removed is a real problem.  By the time the crop is finished, it has degraded enough to be hard to get up.  Even with hand – rather than mechanical – digging and pulling, we can always find pieces of plastic remaining.  With this new biodegradable product, that is not happening.  So, succession planting gets done on time, crops get removed in time for cover crops to be planted, and our fields aren’t full of pieces of plastic of all colors and sizes.  It is pricey – about 3 times the price of regular black plastic.  So far, we have only found it in black (we’d like a white on black product for mid-summer plantings). It does degrade quickly in UV if there is no canopy to protect it and you must protect it in storage.  It is a little more fragile and has to be handled more carefully when laying it.  For instance, we had to reduce the tension on our mulch layer because the clods in our early spring soil were tearing holes in the plastic.  Once we did that, it worked much better. Since we are not certified organic, we haven’t had to worry about it being OMRI labeled. 

 

We like it and will continue to use it because it fits our operation so well.

 

Alison Wiediger, Au Naturel Farm

 


From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Bill Shoemaker
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 5:35 PM
To: Market Farming
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] herbicides for use in a cut flower garden

 

I want to add to what Shawnee Flowerfarmer said. The last two years I've been trialing a truly biodegradable plastic mulch film for crop production. It performs like any other plastic mulch but does not need removal. It just biodegrades at the end of the season. For those unfamiliar with plastic mulch, it is a plastic strip on a long roll that can be laid and secured on the ground mechanically. The grower plants transplants through holes they make in the film. The mulch provides weed control, moisture retention and boosts plants growth by converting light to heat (greenhous effect). Plants produce more and earlier generally.

The product I used came from Ball Seed. It performed very well. Last year I left it in the ground into Winter. We disced the remains into the soil this Spring. By all appearences it's gone. The product we applied this Spring is deteriorating earlier, probably because we've had 14" of rain in the last 6 weeks. But I'm very pleased with it. I think a cut flower or vegetable grower who uses the plastic film on raised beds with organic mulches between the rows will have a great growing system. Drip irrigation under the mulch would just make it better.

Bill

 




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page