Laying Plastic Mulch
Commercial Horticulture Newsletter, July-August 1998
Charlie O'Dell
Extension Horticulturist, Commercial Vegetable Production
Department of Horticulture
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
This is a reminder note to urge you to consider laying some extra rows of plastic mulch as you prepare for possible fall planting of Chandlers, Camerosas and/or Sweet Charlie plug plants. Several growers do so, getting on their land in early spring for earlier vegetable plantings. They also find the wheel punches they use for strawberries are ideal for direct seeding early sweet corn, beans and other early vegetable crops. Everything from peas to squash has been early produced by this technique. Personally, I feel it does a faster, better job as a seeding aid than wheel punches do as planting aids for strawberry plugs! With 4 seats on punchers, the front 2 people drop the seeds, the rear two "squinch" a bit of soil over and firm in the seed, planting a double-rowed bed 300' long in less than 12 minutes. I've seen 2 crops of strawberries, then a crop of fall pumpkins, then the following spring for the 4th crop on "recycled" mulch and drip lines, a final crop of double-rowed sweet corn! Let's use it up and wear it out!
They also use their winter crop covers over these early seedings to get a bit of frost control and to exclude crows, other birds and insects from early plantings, removing the covers after 3 weeks or so from emergence. They gain faster growth under the covers after very uniform, rapid emergence leading to very uniform harvesting. Sweet corn growers report much better early season stands of se and even shrunken-2 supersweets with the combination seedings on raised beds covered with black plastic mulch plus the early use of crop covers.
Melon grower can also make such early direct seedings. Using the crop covers they save the expensive use of transplant plug plants, offsetting the use of crop covers (good covers last for several seasons). Remember how wet (late) was this past spring, and remember, you cannot make use of these early planting potentials unless you make some extra beds, lay some extra plastic mulch with drip tape this fall! Use the same pre-beds application of fertilizer and lime you would use for fall-planted strawberries, then add extra nitrogen or nitrogen/potash during the crop cycle next year at normal sidedress timing for that enterprise. For berry growers in colder areas, laying some extra plastic now means you will be in a position to test-plant some plug plants of Late Star next summer that should be available from commercial greenhouse-grown mother plants producing greenhouse tips in May and June.