Plastic Mulch

[LouisFerdinand]

One gardening catalog featured black plastic mulch. The black plastic mulch was described as "successful warming the soil to accelerate plant growth as well as controlling weeds".
How good is plastic mulch?

 

[Meadowlark]

Its no good, IMO. I cringe whenever I see it being used in the garden. It is an indiscriminate killer of soil micro organisms. It is very slow to break down, if at all. It is made from Polyvinyl Chloride a substance which isn't a natural soil supplement. They say it raises soil temps by at least 5 deg. but what happens in summer heat? I'll tell you what happens, it fries all the micro nutrients out of your soil. Removing it is difficult at best.

Natural compost is much, much better. It will provided the same weed control but with the added bonus of soil building instead of soil destroying.

I know a lot of people use it primarily because of its weed control properties...but an old fashioned hoe would be orders of magnitude more beneficial to your soil and to yourself.

Compost used in conjunction with cover crops in rotation is far superior in so many aspects.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

NO. don't use.

 

[LouisFerdinand]

I have not used plastic mulch.

 

[trail twister]

Many of the market gardners in this area use plastic mulch between th rows. the rolls are mounted on thr planters and rolls out when planting then once th crop is harvested they coime back start the plastic in the rolls and wind it back in.

Al