I just use the black plastic that you can get from the big box home repair stores (Home Depot, Lowes etc). It's cheap, and works great. You can usually get it in rolls of 3' X 50', or 4'X50' if you have raised beds, which is perfect. Otherwise they sell it in all sorts of dimensions and sizes.

Once you get a rain, you might see areas where water puddles up, I just take my garden spade and poke a hole so the water drains into the garden soil.

There is more expensive "IRT" black plastic mulch, that supposedly works better, but the plain stuff seems to work great for me.

As far as drip irrigation, I have never gone through the expense of doing it, but I'm positive it would make a great improvement to the garden, so if you have the energy / money go crazy.

The one thing I would not do (although I'm sure others do), is use the 'landscape' fabric that they sell. While it will let water through, it will also eventually let weeds up through it, and could get clogged in roots etc. But as I said, I'm sure others have used it with success.

after you lay the plastic down do you put mulch on top of it or just let it be? The only places I have used the weed be gone landscape material is around my perennials with wood bark on top and have not seen one weed make it through that except at an opening where a plant is also coming through.

I just leave it be, as I don't care what the veggie garden looks like :)

Some people do put some sort of decorative mulch on top, but I don't :)

I use large circles of the perforated landscape fabric around my tomato plants (see photo below), primarily to keep down weeds within the cages, but yes it does allow water and more importantly air in through it. I use it only around the plant itself, not the whole row or in the aisles.

But other, organic mulches are far more beneficial to your garden, plants, and soil so it all depends on why your are using it.

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Benefits and problems will be determined by where you live. jwstell is far north of us and in much cooler climate. In our zones heat trapped beneath the plastic can kill the plants - cook the roots and dry the soil - so the solid black heavy-duty plastic can be hazardous especially if you cover all the ground with it.

And yes, assuming you do have to water your garden rather than count on rainfall then soaker hose or drip irrigation under the plastic is very beneficial. I use soaker hose. Otherwise most of the water runs off into between the plants before it can get through the small holes.

In the link below, scroll down to the discussions with the blue borders for more discussions on using it and also check out the discussions on the Soil & Mulch form (black plastic isn't popular there for several reasons ;).

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Plastic mulch discussions

Dave,

I notice the heavy hay mulch. Has a 4 or 6 inch rain ever caused it to be too wet and mucky with all that mulch?

Not down here Wayne. We are lucky to get a 1" rainfall here in the summer so never have to worry about a 4-6 inch one.

Plus we have plenty of hay so if it did get mucky we'd just lay more hay on top. We normally build it up as the plants grow so by mid-summer there is a good 6-8" of hay or more.

Dave

Well by mucky I meant underneath the hay and not as a walking surface. Anyway, I thought I would ask.

Thanks guys. I mostly want to use the plastic mulch with Melons and cucumbers. Anyone with experience in this regard?

I use 4' wide IRT plastic mulch to grow melons. I rotary till, then lay t-tape, then the plastic over that. I cover the edges of the plastic by hand with a shovel. I transplant into the plastic using a bulb digger to punch holes in the plastic. I sell veggies at the farmers market and last year planted 8 100' rows like this with cantaloupes and watermelons. It works very well.

I have used a little bit of the 4' wide IRT 100 mulch. If you don't hand water underneath or use T tape, it gets really dry underneath. So I do cut some 3' x 4' pieces for some melons to give them an early heat boost. I don't use continous strip anymore......this is just another possibility with plastic mulch.

I covered the entire spot that i planted watermelons in and just poked holes where the water puddled up. I have drip irrigation and watered them every day w/ 3 gals per plant. I believe the heat generated from the plastic was key to my success with the melons. I used black plastic on the whole garden and would recommend it to everyone that is using a drip system.

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As you can see they are doing very well in the 2nd pic. I actually pruned them like crazy to keep them in thier own space, I just ran the vine over with the riding lawn mower on the lawn side and hand pruned inside the garden to keep the walkway clear so they did not get tangled in with the peppers

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And here are some of the melons that came out of the
11'x 100'watermelon section of the garden. I got somewhere around 60 melons.
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Dale

Here is a link that might be useful: [http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/thepodpiper/?start=0(http://s117.photobucket.com/albums/o65/thepodpiper/?start=0)

Thanks for the help. Will figure out how to set upa drip system and then cover with IRT. Great pictures and I'm impressed with the neat look of these gardens.

I have extensive experience with plastic mulch on commercial vegetable crops in Florida. If you have grown vegetables for years sucessfully without it, using it will likely require a considerable shift in most everything you do. If you are new to vegetable gardening, don't complicate things by adding plastic mulch to the mix, stick with straw, leaves, pine needles etc.. If you are in an area that requires irrigation to get through the season, try starting with figuring out what sort of drip system works best for you first. I like the drip tapes like T-tape because they are inexpensive, easy to install and deliver the water very evenly down the row. Drip tubes are expensive, don't last long and have very poor distribution uniformity compared to the commercial tapes.

michael357, so you do not think it would benefit someone who is trying to grow watermelons say in the northern states where the soil does not get to optimum temps. using the other types of mulch that you describe would do the exact opposite by shading the ground. I am not positive though that that is the type of melon that drscott is talking about and am also not sure if warm roots are good for other types of melons.

Dale

Dale,
Raising melons and such in the north is different from Florida growing......as you know.

Even heavy organic mulches sound great [and usually are] but you better have good drainage. I sure was glad last year that I was not too heavily mulched in my tomators when too much rain came.

Warm soil definitely good, soggy feet bad, definitely. Much research ha shown the benefits of early fruiting when growing watermelon on black plastic mulch commercially. I qualified that statement with "commercially" because certain practices are used to make the beds and lay the plastic tight to the beds. The plastic/soil contact is critical to heating the soil no matter how far north or south you garden. In Florida, melon crops grown on what amounts to 4-6" raised beds that are planted in cold conditions for melon growth. The soil warms faster and more because of the raised aspect and of course the mulch.

Personally, I live in north-central KS and have adapted the Florida methods with very little change, mostly I use flat beds because it is way too much work to make raised beds without the machinery. In my location overly wet soil is not usually a problem, rather high temperatures. By the time it is hot, the vines should easily cover the mulch (3+'wide). Some people like to use heavy organic mulches over some parts or even all of their gardens. I've never cared to over the entire garden because of the excess water problem mentioned above. Usually it is placed heavy under the crop rows about 2-3 ft wide (drip irrigating w/o plastic). On melon crops i put down a layer of wheat straw for the vines to grow out in several sucessions as the vines grow outward to keep the fruit off bare soil.

My point about not jumping into drip irrigated plasticulture was for gardening newcomers. Don't over complicate your gardening.

I would not recommend to anyone trying to grow any warm season crop including melons to heavily mulch their rows right up to the new plants as that would (obviously) cool the soil early in the season. I you want the earliest melons use: black plastic mulch tightly fitted to the bed about 5' (exposed) wide, drip irrigation if needed, floating rowcovers and plant transplants. These methods are adaptable to many growing conditions and should be altered to your circumstances.

Good luck and happy hoeing!

Dale - that little toehead on the melons is too cute! Nice patio too.

Thanks for all the thoughts. Can anyone recommend the best brand of plastic mulch to use and where to buy it?