The color of mulch you use depends on what you want it to do. For Tomatoes red mulch is the best! We had HUGE sucess with the 100 feet we tried of it this year. Earlier yeilds and nicer fruit!

Black is better if you have a weed problem, weeds can still grow under clear mulch. That's why most people use black.

For earliest results use black or red on the ground with hoops and clear over your starts, to create a huge greenhouse. You could use a zip house for the same results.

There is a TON of research avilable on line on plastic mulches, check it out and consider BIODEGRABLE as opposed to photodegradable mulches. They don't last as long, but they do their job and then can be tilled in as they are made from soy based products.

There has been quite a bit of research published about plastic mulches and after a 5+ year study by a university whose name I cannot remember they concluded that tomatoes yeilded better on black plastic rather than the IRT SRM Red plastic mulch.

Either way you will not get a much earlier harvest by using plastic, maybe a day or two. what you will get is a lot less weeding, a better yeild and far less soil born diseases.

If you use plastic remember you must have some sort of irrigation under the plastic mulch. I use drip tape but soaker hoses would also work.

If you want really early tomatoes (like 2 to 6 weeks earlier) you have to use high tunnels. We plant early tomato seedlings in unheated high tunnels the beginning of April and get ripe tomatoes by mid June, 3 to 6 weeks earlier than anyone else around here

Lucy

One year we used red and black plastic. The tomatoes planted did not come in any earlier with red. We did get a huge amout of grass happily growing under the red and lots of holes where wire grass poked through. We now use black plastic with soaker hoses.

i use IRT green plastic with t-tapes under it and spun bound row cover material over wire hoops. i plant around mid-april and get ripe tomatoes in early july. i take the row cover material off on or around june 1st. we can get hard freezes here at the end of may.

ditto to Randy except for the freezes at the end of may! Exact same method here!