Not sure what you're disagreeing with. If you don't use plastics in your garden, you've made an effort to avoid spreading microplastics. I have no argument with that. But in your non-garden life, if you use plastic bags, plastic utensils, plastic containers, plastic wrappings, plastic tarps, plastic fabrics, etc. etc., the garden effort isn't going to make a big difference in the amount of microplastics you put into the environment, and you ARE very much still contributing to the problem. On the other hand, if you can tell me that you indeed don't use ANY plastics, I guess avoiding the small amount of plastic that would come from your garden could be considered admirable. But I'd find that quite surprising. I'm not sure it's possible to live these days without using any plastic. Much of what you get in stores is packaged in some plastic, or plastic-lined paper, and that gets sent to the landfill. Considering where microplastics actually come from, if a million people stopped using plastic in their garden, it wouldn't make any difference at all.

I've started my cucumber plants under Agribon for several years, as I also do for young squash plants. Insects (cuke beetles, squash bugs, SVB) would quickly destroy any vine crop seedlings I left unprotected. I had a lot of years that were total losses for squash & cukes, prior to using covers - and only a few minor losses since. When the cukes begin to bloom, I remove the covers & train the vines to a trellis. In my area, where there are wild cucumbers & pickle farms to sustain their population, cucumber beetles will always fly in from the surrounding area. I don't know whether they overwinter where their host plants were the year earlier, since I rotate the location of my vine crops each year (good practice for any crop). I've never had them appear under the covers. It seems that if I cover the vine crops early, and miss the first egg-laying cycle, only a few beetles appear later in the season. These are in far fewer numbers than I would expect otherwise, and the mature plants are healthy enough that they generally do little damage. However, they can still infect wilt-susceptible cucumbers, even mature plants. Growing a disease-resistant variety, or a parthenocarpic variety which can be kept covered, will overcome this. For wilt-susceptible varieties, spreading single plants throughout the garden - rather than together in one place - will increase chances for success. The bees can find them more easily than the beetles. While row covers themselves are fairly inexpensive, that can't be said for the methods offered of holding them down. Ground staples are pretty pricey, especially if you need a lot of them. The same can be said of the clips used to fasten fabric row covers to PVC hoops. I tried making my own ground staples, by cutting single-row strips from 4-foot-wide concrete remesh; it worked well, but they were a pain to remove at year's end. Personally, I would recommend just allowing the fabric to float over the vines. It will be pushed up by the foliage, provided that the cover is allowed enough slack for it to do so. The most economical way to secure a cover is to bury the edges. I spread the cover, use bamboo skewers to hold the edges in place, and cover them with several inches of soil. Water the soil over the edges to bond it to the fabric, and to seal the edges. Be sure to leave enough slack for the plants to grow. If you need access, leave one side unburied, holding it down with something which can be easily removed. I use 10-foot lengths of 1/2" rebar rod, but boards held down by bricks would work as well. Whatever is used to hold down the open end, the edges should be lightly buried after each entry, since the beetles will crawl under any edge left unsealed. Also, round off any sharp edges which might chafe against the fabric as the wind moves it back & forth. Another reason I found that I like using soil... it has no sharp edges. ;-) The buried cover will resist all but the strongest winds, since it will tend to lay flat. Oh, and it will keep out slugs as well, unless they were there before the cover was applied. Maybe a little OT, but one last note, regarding cucumber beetles. My observations seem to indicate that the use of fertilizer on vine crops increases their attractiveness to cucumber beetles. They locate their host plants by scent, so it may be that the accelerated growth caused by fertilization increases the production of the chemicals which attract them. It doesn't seem to matter if the fertilizer is chemical or organic. Attacks by other insects (such as squash bugs on squash) also seem to encourage attack by cucumber beetles. I don't protect all of my squash with row cover, since Tromboncino is naturally resistant to SVB & can fight off squash bugs & cuke beetles on its own when healthy. If I find a swarm of cucumber beetles on a young Tromboncino vine, there is nearly always an adult squash bug somewhere on the plant... so the beetles actually act as my "early warning" for the first squash bugs. I've inspected all plants several times when I first observed this, and only the plants with squash bugs had swarms of beetles attacking them. It allows me to catch the squash bugs early, before they have laid eggs.

My entire set up is in the garage. I have a thermometer set up next to the seedling rack, and the coldest I have seen it get down to is 49 degrees and that was when the highs were in the low 30's and the lows were about 14 outside for several days in a row. Of course those temps are out of the norm for here. I have actually seen it get as high as 80 in my garage this winter during a warm spell last week. I have a heat pad to keep the soil warm for germination and they usually pop up in about 3 - 5 days even when the air temp gets a little low in there and get light immediately. If they don't get light soon, those little heads that are poking out will be several inches tall before you know it. The rest of them should follow in the next couple of days. Besides, with the shop lights only a few inches from the starts, it will give them a little more heat as well. jj

Here's the thing about putting down those kinds of mulches. To really get the full benefit the bed must be uniform and the mulch making even contact. That's hard to do without proper equipment. That's not to say you wont get some benefit just not optimal or uniform results. If the plants shade the black paper later in the summer, it getting too hot is really not that much of an issue. However smaller plants may suffer. One way to get around this is to spray a dilute mixture of non-toxic water based white paint onto the plastic. It will reflect some heat. One could also cover it with some other kind of mulch like straw or grass clippings. Floating row covers work great. Just be sure to anchor them well so the wind doesnt pull them up. I do 2 things - I use sod staples to pin down and I dig a trench to lay the edges in and then cover with soil. You need some kind of hoop to keep the plants from touching the row cover. 9 gauge wire cut in 64-72" sections and curved are about right (depending on width of fabric/height of plant). You can use other things to keep them from touching. I have in the past when plants were small used black plastic pots next to the plants to keep the row cover from touching them (on the side not blocking the light). Row covers vary on who much they protect depending on their "weight". The more protection the less light they are letting through. Keep that in mind in deciding.