It's interesting how what works in one person's garden does not necessarily work in another's. I've tried plastic several times and never had satisfactory results. Don't get me wrong - I wanted to like it! I wanted it to work. Who wouldn't like the promise of less weeding, fewer pests, and increased yields? It just never seems to turn out that way for me. It had been several years since I used plastic, so I decided to try it again last year for all my warm season crops. Here are my observations based on MY garden (yours may be different): 1) Fairly easy to install. A bit tricky to get it tucked in nice and tight around the edges of the beds as is recommended, but it only needs to be done once. Overall, less work than other mulches. 2) Difficult to control moisture! I know one of the promises of plastic mulch is that it conserves water, but I found it difficult to keep the soil moist, despite adequate rainfall AND me sticking the hose under the plastic at least once each week. I'm sure a soaker hose would work better, but our water is extremely hard and full of iron, so it would foul up a soaker hose in no time flat. So at least once per week all summer, I would turn the hose to a moderate trickle and stick it under the plastic, positioning it between plants so as not to erode the soil around the roots. Move it every 15 minutes or so, when the soil was good and damp. My hope was that capillary action would help transport water around so plants did not have to be watered individually. Unfortunately, whenever I peeled back the mulch a few days later, the result was always the same... dry, dry DRY! 3) No apparent improvement with regard to pests. In fact, squash bugs were even worse last year. Not sure if this has anything to do with the plastic, but.. 4) No early ripening of fruits. In fact, tomatoes were later than ever. Then again, many gardeners in the Northeast reported this last year though, so I'm not blaming the plastic. My theory is that the heat wave we had in June sterilized the first round of blossoms, so we all had to wait until Round 2. 5) Black plastic definitely attracts snakes. This could be good or bad, depending on what variety of snakes we're talking about and how you feel about them. I saw them lounging on the plastic frequently and found numerous snake skins under the plastic at the end of the season. I can accept the snakes (in my case all harmless garters), but not being able to control (or easily monitor) moisture was a real problem for me. Again, your mileage may vary. This is just my experience.

Well I ordered the IRT 100 from Fedco today. I ordered 2 4ftx50 ft rolls since the shipping was almost as much as 1 roll! 20.20 shipped for 100 ft of the IRT isn't too bad in my opinion. The big roll of the thicker black plastic at HD is more than that. Now I just need for the 12" of snow and ice to melt so I can start getting my beds built and go pick up some compost from a local horse farm that responded to my Craigslist ad. Still to do: Figure out what to plant where Build beds Pick up many yards of compost from local horse farm Fill Beds Buy Drip Irrigation Setup Install Drip Irrigation Modify SWCs for Auto Watering System Learn how to Can & Preserve Veggies Reap the harvest all year long!

I ordered some red plastic mulch, and got it too late for my tomatoes. I am trying it with these egplants, and they seem to be doing well. I am also surprised by the present elongated shape of the fruit. These were labeled as just regular black beauty eggplant. Besides the unexpected shape, these are also growing faster and are far more productive, a lot earlier, than specimens I have attempted to grow in the past.

Just three years ago, where my house and yard is now was just a field of weeds. On my half acre lot, I've mulched with between 500 and 600 bags of leaves from neighbors, ground up, and applied thickly to growing beds, spread regularly and thinly on the lawn. In some of the areas where I wasn't going to pay much attention to for a few years, I put down a thick layer of newspaper before piling on the leaf mulch. In areas where I am actively gardening, I just pile on the leaves each fall and winter(already started collecting leaves this year). I already have absolutely no weed "problem" in my garden areas. Yes, the mulch keeps down almost all of the weeds. Also, some weeds sprout and come through the mulch. The advantage of the mulch is that the soil underneath never is hard, dry, and impossible to remove weeds from. I walked through my garden often that first year in particular, to remove weeds when small and well BEFORE they can ever go to seed. Anything that can grow from any small piece of the subject weed or that included seeds(along borders, etc., I put in a trash can for removal from my property. More benign things go in the compost pile. But they are very easy to pull from well mulched soil, and there just aren't many of them. The casual way I deal with weeding is an indication that just the organic mulch is all I need. I have seen, heard, and experienced horrible things with landscape fabric, and I won't subject myself to that.