Personally I prefer to use black plastic for warming the soil. I've found it heats somewhat slower than clear, but it also doesn't allow weed seeds to start growing either. I usually lay it down about 2-3 weeks earlier that I plan to plant and the soil is warmed sufficiently enough. Also I normally cut holes thru the plastic to plant so the soil continually warms for a few more weeks. I'll remove it when I start laying down organic material for mulching about the fist week of June. I only use plastic mulch to warm the soil for: Melon, Pumpkin, Eggplant, and Okra so I can plant out between May 11-15th vs waiting the extra 2 weeks after the last average frost date has passed. One year all I had available was clear trash bags to use. I laid it over the hills I created for the melon. Within about 1.5 weeks I had well over 1,000 Amaranthus 'Intense Purple' seedlings literally covering the hills LOL! I took this picture while I was in the process of laying down mulch; as you can see I ultimately decided to allow some Amaranthus to stay, but many of the smaller ones ended up in the compost pile. No more clear plastic after that fiasco :O PS. How soon you want to lay it out will depend on your soil type. Soils having a lot of clay will warm up much slower than a sandy loam soil :)

Thank you for the follow ups. Yes, long term storage is quite important to me. Last year a great many of my squash were not ideal even when not stored long (as stated in the OP, I picked the bulk of the crop on August 15). I resolved to leave 2013 squash on the vine until well into October come hell, high water or an army of critters (in my yard that means squirrels). Some years ago, IIRC, squirrels weren't a problem, but for around 4 years running now, they are a huge problem every year, that in spite of my having deposited two of them in the park ~6 miles away and killing one with a rat trap. I stopped setting rat traps, I've found the squirrels trip them and generally seem unfazed. One time, however, one did die. This year a squirrel (I assume it's only one, but who knows?), has tripped my trap but somehow not been caged. I figure sooner or later I will get him/her, or else the beast will wise up and stop hitting the trap. They do seem clever at times. I'm seriously contemplating buying a pellet gun. I'm curious, is there a way I can configure things so I get emails when someone responds in this thread? I have not seen that in these forums yet, and I did look today when I registered and posted this. I only see something about allowing people to post me directly through email, which I'm not sure about.

If you were to hire it out, it'd cost alot more than it's worth. However, if you were to go down to Michaels, or some other crafts store and pic up some ceramic stain in the color you want, YOU could probably paint them relatively easy.

I could only really skim this but a couple things just to mind: 1) you really, really must prevent rabbits from eating new growth of things and 2) "monthly" fertilization strikes me as too often for anything but vegetables and I guess annuals or a handful of 'temperennials' like Brugsmansia that are porky pigs of the plant world. If I planted a Clem, and I've planted a few, I wouldn't even fert. the first year - although I might give it a LITTLE bit in the hole, but only if I didn't see fert. beads in the potting mix used by the nursery. The I would only lightly fertilize the 2nd year, once. And that should be spread around maybe 2' diameter of the planting area...you want to encourage the root system to expand. Not just dump it at the based of the vine. YMMV if you have sandy or rocky New England soil, but I have a clay loam that retains nutrients quite well. You can see how I use a variety of materials to protect new plants from the lop eared rats: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6111092/a-little-out-and-about-sam-style-and-a-visit-to-my-garden once something has been established for a couple years I know it will be able to recover from a mauling, but I don't assume that about new things.