Roll Out The Red Carpet- Red Plastic Mulch for Tomatoes
February 3, 2010 by Gardener
Filed under Growing Groceries
Plastic mulch rocks. It warms the soil, keeps weeds pretty much 100% down, protects your drip tape, etc. The only thing that sucks is it’s pretty much not reusable and isn’t excatly sustainable. Rick, on the previous post, mentioned biodegradable plastics made from cornstarch. For the fall season I will defintely be giving these a try, but for now I had already purchased a 600 foot roll of regular red plastic film.
So why red? To quote Iowa State:
“Light reflected from red mulch has a lower red (R) to far-red (FR) ratio than normal sunlight,
while black plastic has little effect on this ratio. The lower ratio has been reported to
enhance the carbohydrate movement into the developing tomato fruit resulting in increased
early production. Also, many of the colored mulches, including red, are translucent
and will increase early spring soil temperature resulting in rapid plant growth, earlier
flowering, and fruit maturation.” -Effect of Red Plastic Mulch on Early Tomato Production
If I was cool, I would have done some tomatoes on red plastic and some on black and compared the results. It would be good to know, since red plastic is more expensive. I tend to go all out with something new, though, and all 500 feet of my tomato plantings this year will be with red plastic. I hope it makes a difference.
I started laying the rows out in the tunnel on Friday, and I’ll plant the first transplants Wednesday. It would probably be best to let the ground under the plastic warm a little more (I think I read two weeks somewhere), but these transplants would be rootround by then and I certainly don’t want to transplant them all to larger containers.
Here’s a little slideshow with some pics:
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