Does plastic mulch help prevent disease? Deprive plants of water?
Whats the best mulch? If properly used, it does reduce splashing from the soil surface onto the leaves. This might help prevent some infection but several of the foliage diseases can be airborne which allows them to infect your plants anyway. Plain plastic sheeting can prevent water from getting to your plants. If you use it, put a soaker hose under the plastic or use another watering method. Generally, the plastic sheeting is a poor choice for mulch. Newspapers with a covering of pine straw or grass clippings works well and still lets water pass through. Other materials such as pine bark mulch or old hay may be acceptable though hay can have lots of grass seed which wind up growing in your garden. One of the better methods of preventing weed growth is with woven plastic mesh. Check out the material at ShawFabrics What about the weather? “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein) There’s not much you can do to change the weather so best to han
