Tired of weeding yet? You cut the head off the dragon and the following week it's two-headed, and then three-headed, and so on? That's what I faced last year, starting about this point in the season, and I vowed to look at all means known under the sun to cut back on the never ending and (if you look at the time it takes you away from other important tasks in gardening) unprofitable chore of pulling, chopping, burning, cultivating, or any other mechanical means of weeding.
I had heard of plasticulture, but didn't know much about it, so I started cutting trail with google and thought the promise was worth some trial work on the farm. I bought some 50' rolls of black plastic and hand layed rows for okra, melons, watermelons, squash, and tomatoes beside rows that were planted in bare ground. Lock, stock, and barrel was the difference between identical varieties of plants grown in bare soil or the plastic mulch. Not only was weeding no longer an issue, but the plants outgrew and looked much healthier in the mulch versus bare ground. Maybe it was because the mulch helps retain soil moisture, or maybe it was the added warmth, but all I knew was that the difference was obvious to the eye.
This year we had a guy come out with a mulch laying machine, and we're going to purchase one ourselves sometime during the summer and try to get some annual strawberries in the mulch by October. Besides keeping the crops weed free, another added benefit that I've already seen this year is how much cleaner the vegetables are, which equates to mucho meno washing on my part.
Right after getting the pigs situated this morning I took a few snaps of the summer vegetables growing in plastic mulch. Here's a shot of sweet corn:
and beans:
and tomatoes:
and last but not least, this was the early pumpkins, squash, and zuchinni I set out that got snowed on and then sand blasted by the wind to where there were hardly any leaves left on the plants:
Hopefully you can tell in these photos how nice the vegetables are looking this early in the summer vegetable season. So if you get fed up with the daily bungle in the jungle known as weed combat you should think about plastic mulch as an option for low hassle gardening. Thoughts?
Thanks for reading, and we'll have some Farm Fodder news posted on Thursday!
Pork & Greens