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Growing Tomatoes

Has anyone tried Red Mulch?

12 years ago

I'm not talking about those unnatural looking dyed wood chips, I mean the plastic looking sheet that are offered in gardening catalogs? One of my friends says its a must, I've never used it or known anyone who has. Anyone have any experience with it?

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Comments (5)

digdirt2
12 years ago
Yeah it comes up for discussion here several times every year. Search will pull up the discussions if they are still here.

Consensus is (based on all the studies done) that any gain is minimal overall and is affected by several other variables. Basically its use is your choice.

Personally I tried it a couple of years when it first came out and concluded it was a marketing ploy for the most part. JMO

Dave
carolyn137
12 years ago
I was present at the NE Vegetable Conference in MA when Clemson U introduced that red mulch. It was designed to be used by commercial farmers who use determinate plants since you have to leave a couple of feet on either side of the plants for reflection to work.

The initial data said an increase of 15-20% yield, but that figure has gone down and down to maybe near 10%.

So if you have a plant that gives you 20 tomatoes, you might get two more and then weigh that against the cost of the red plastic mulch and it makes no sense to me to use it.

Carolyn, who was raised in a Shaker built home in Loudonville and who knows the Albany area very well.
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luvahydrangea
Original Author
12 years ago
Oh hi Carolyn :) I have a friend in Loudonville, in fact she is the one who told me its a must, lol.

I'm not much for gimmicks, just was curious about the experience people may have had with it. I told her not to bother, my dad always grew the most amazing tomatoes and all he ever did was mulch with grass clippings.

I did do a search Dave, and got a lot of results none of which said anything about it. :)

Thanks for the responses. All my tomatoes are indeterminate and planted way too close to each other to make it useful I suppose.
digdirt2
12 years ago
Here you go for starters -

Red plastic?

Red plastic mulch experiment

Red ground cover under tomatoes?
luvahydrangea
Original Author
12 years ago
Ok, i see my mistake was in searching "Red mulch" I should have searched "red plastic." Thanks for posting those Dave. :)

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