Mutchless,

I used red plastic mulch that came with the Tomato Success Kits that I bought last year. I also have one Earthbox that has a black plastic mulch cover. All my plants did really good last year. IMHO I seen no difference between the two colors.

This year I'm just going with black plastic from garbage bags.

grb1 :)

Here's links to a couple of previous discussions on the red plastic - some pros and some cons. There are several others but the search engine is still on the fritz for some of them.

Red plastic mulch...

Red ground cover...

Here's a post that I did at another site just this morning where folks somehow thought that red mulch even increased the size ot fruits. Not true.

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I believe it was Clemson U that first worked with different colored plastic mulches and well I remember the early results, still touted today, that there can be a 20% increase in yield, and yield was what it was all about, not increased size of tomatoes or anything else, as regards the red mulch.

But those figures dropped dramatically and now figures such as about 10% yield increase are thrown around. That means if you have 20 fruits on a plant that you get maybe two more, and then figure in the cost of the red mulch and it doesn't make much sense.

It's the reflection of sun off the red plastic that matters and that also means that there can be nothing surrounding the plant in order for the sun to reflect off the red. This method was devised and tested using det plants and there was about a 5 ft distance between rows and clear space between plants.

The stuff in that Park's article about the red automaters makes little to no sense at all. Again, you have to have plenty of room for the sun to reflect off the red mulch and the sun can't reflect off a red automater above which a plant is growing.

I do wish that all the places that sell this red mulch would be more honest about the possible yield increase and also tell folks that the area around plants has to be clear so that the sun can reflect.

In short, maybe for commercial farmers growing det varieties, but to me it makes no sense at all for the home gardener.

Carolyn, waiting for the ice storm with great trepidation; not good when one is using a walker.

I got lured into using the red mulch - I found the quality was very poor and I did not find a huge diff from using black plastic. I didn't (and couldn't - because it was destroyed in one year) use it again.

Several years ago I tried the red plastic. The sheeting I bought lasted three years and would have been usable for a year or two longer, but I moved and threw it away. I tried it alone, splitting my tomato garden into two parts, one with red and one half with black plastic. The third year I replaced the black plastic with grass clippings and straw for mulch.

My experience is that red plastic is better than no mulch at all, red and black mulch are about equal to each other and because it is easier to get rain and hose watering to the plants, I prefer natural mulch. Besides, natural mulch can be tilled into the soil.

I did have my plants caged and separated enough to reflect the red light, however as Carolyn said, home gardeners would never notice any difference in size or production from one color to another. How would I ever know or care if my twenty or so tomato plants could have increased my tomato output by a few percentage points with red mulch.

Unless you get a deal on red plastic and like using plastic mulch, don't go out of your way to use it just to increase your production by a tomato or two or an ounce or two for the years production.

Red plastic mulch is a real moneymaker, especially if you can alternate rows with black or green. As a market gardener with a roadside presence I found no real production difference with the red mulch but curious people who need to know the ins and outs of a community will often become customers. If you can get just one newspaper article out of the scheme you'll be set for the season.