Mulches vegetables

Lamont WJ Jr (1993) Plastic mulches for the production of vegetable crops. HortTecnology 3 35-39... 

Well-rotted manure can be dug into the soil or spread over it as a mulch, especially if it contains plenty of straw. Don t let it touch living plant stems. The main use for manures is in the vegetable garden, on hungry crops such as potatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, squashes, tomatoes, and brassicas. They also make a good topdressing for roses that are pruned hard every year, and for herbaceous plants, applied every two or three years. 

Clockwise from top left) Biodegradable mulches An ornamental bark mulch, good around shrubs and at the base of hedges lawn clippings used as a mulch in the vegetable plot, here spread over layers of newspaper (see also overleaf)] one-year-old leaf mold well-rotted straw. 

Paper mulch is a sturdy paper sold in a roll, for use on annual vegetable beds. 

A light-excluding mulch membrane will stop weeds from growing, and will, in time, kill them. If you want to convert an area of lawn into a vegetable or flower bed, mulch it in the spring and it will be clear by the fall, if not before. Persistent perennials may take a couple of years or more to die. Vigorous annual plants. 

Bulky soil improvers spread over vegetable beds to condition and feed the soil applying water correctly at the roots of plants, rather than pouring it over the leaves the need for hoeing is reduced in these close-planted beds shallots growing through a mulch membrane for moisture retention and weed control. 

Reflective plastic mulch in various colors and aluminum foil mulch can be used to repel thrips and aphids on some vegetables. Reducing aphid and thrips infestations may also reduce the spread of virases carried by these insects. These mulches apparently confuse thrips and aphids, making it more difficult for them to locate vegetable plants. 

Applying manure to vegetable gardens can be done in a variety of ways. We have already mentioned its usefulness in producing compost. A second way is to make a manure tea of 100 pounds of manure in a 60-gallon barrel of water. Let the solution steep for two or three weeks, then stir and use the solution to water plants. Manure may also be used to mulch plants, so long as it is kept several inches away from plants so it won t bum them. 

Brandsseter, L.O. and Riley, H. 2002. Cover crops and mulches for weed control in organically grown vegetables. In Cloutier, D.C. (ed.) Proceedings of the 5th EWRS Workshop on Physical and Cultural Weed Control. European Weed Research Society, Pisa. p. 174. 

Runham, S.R., Town, S.J. and Eitzpatrick, J.C. 2000. Evaluation over four seasons of a paper mulch used for weed control in vegetables. Acta Horticulturae 513 193-201. 

The potential of plant biomass transfers to contribute to soil fertility and crop nutrient supply will ultimately not only depend on land availability and vegetative productivity, but also on the availability of labour and capital for collection, transport and mulching. When considering issues of sustainability, it must be kept in mind that concentrating nutrients from a large area on a smaller area deprives most of the land of its fertility. 

The principle of the sandwich system is that a strip about 50 cm wide on either side of the row of trees, outside the area of the trunks, is hoed, while at the same time low ground cover is grown on a 35-50 cm wide strip in the middle of the row, without mulching. The total volume of soil without competition from vegetation, per tree, thus remains just as large as if the whole area were hoed, or it can he varied as required. 

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