Sheldon wrote:

Your comparison is skewed, you are making your unmulched plants
compete with weeds.....

Agreed but still not a useless experiment.

I would suggest had you kept your unmulched
plants cultivated of weeds they would have equaled or surpassed the
plants surrounded by red plastic sheeting....


That's just a guess with nothing to back it up.

Actually any medium that
prevents air and moisture from penetrating does not qualify as mulch,
that's simply a plastic barrier.

I agree but check your seed catalogs... they all call it mulch so I went
along with it.


You should be embarrassed to present your weed
patch as a vegetable garden.

Those are your words. It is an experimental plot to see the effect of
mulch. We have about 20 tomatoes planted in a proper garden.

If nothing else, it proves that "mulch" eliminates the hassle of weeding.

It was also pointed out by Ann that it might have an effect on blight
which is the biggest loss we have in tomatoes. We used to stop picking
at frost time. Now we stop when the plants die, which is weeks before
frost.

js

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