Plasticulture Mulch Layer

[heavyhitterokra]

Plasticulture Mulch Layer

For many years, we'd lay our Plasticulture Mulch by hand, using a water pipe shoved through the core of a 2,400' foot roll of plastic, with two people to carry it along.

(Beginner's Note): The first year we did this by hand, we bought a 4,000' foot roll of Plasticulture mulch because the larger roll was sold at a better price per foot, but we soon realized upon delivery, that the weight of that thing was in excess of 200 pounds.  Never again!

To raise our beds, we'd use a team of mules and a double shovel plow.  We'd run two passes, side by side in opposite directions, to break the ground for each new row.  Then, we'd use two, 16" inch concrete hoes; and two people walking along hoeing, while standing across from one another.  We pulled the dirt toward a high center, forming a low berm about 12" inches high between them.  We made each row about 150' feet long.  After that, we'd square the top of each row, using a rock rake with the tine side up, dragging it the length of each row.

Once the beds were raised and leveled, we'd place a roll of Plasticulture across the top of each bed and unroll it using a pipe spindle.  As we did that our kids would follow along with shovels, covering the edges of the plastic.  Our garden had 14 raised bed rows, 150' feet long each.  That would require 2,100' feet of plasticulture, and slightly more drip tape.  Extra drip tape was needed in order to tie knots in the plug end and hook the feeder end of the drip tape to the header valves.

We did that for several years after we moved here, to help put my wife through Law School.  We were raising a couple of tons of Certified Organic veggies each year, to sell to the local Reasor's grocery store in Tahlequah, the old IGA store, the new Save-A-Lot, 9 local restaurants, Oasis Health Food Store, the Tahlequah Farmer's Market, tail gate sales, and the Tahlequah City Hospital.

Finally, as we could kind of afford it, we bought a Plasticulture Mulch Layer to pull behind a tractor.  (For the first few years we had the mulch layer, I had to borrow a tractor once per year to pull it). 

Since I'd never used a Plasticulture rig before, it was kind of tough trying to decide which kind of rig to purchase.  Maybe, this thread can help someone else who is on the fence to make up their mind.

I bought ours from Morgan County Seeds in Missouri.  
www.morgancountyseeds.com/product/blue-ribbon-mulch-layer/

They manufacture their own brand there.  It's called "Blue Ribbon."  I've been really well pleased with the way ours has held up through the years.  The Blue Ribbon model is a well built, reliable machine.
This is a front on view of it, looking at the 3 point hookup and the sweeps.  The sweeps are 70" inches wide, narrowing down into a channel, resembling a brick mold, where the raised bed is formed as you pull this rig along behind your tractor.  The whole rig is powder coated and baked on to prevent rusting.  I've had this one for a little over 7 years, using it hard, every year, with little apparent wear.  It's a tough machine.

This is a front on view, taken from a lower angle, to help show how the bed forming channel is lined with heavy Teflon type plastic glides, mounted to the steel outer-hull.  The white, steel pipe shown at the center is for the irrigation drip tape to feed along right at the top of each raised bed (directly below the surface of the plastic mulch).  Some folks adjust their drip tape to be buried deeply in the bed.  I run mine at the top of the dirt mound, to make it easier to find and repair leaks.

This guide has the words, "BLUE RIBBON" laser cut into the spool guide discs.  This is the steel drip tape spool guide to keep the spool of tape from 'swarming' as it feeds off along each row. (Not all manufacturers thought of this).  So it's a handy, handy feature.  I've had to cut this type of guide out of plywood to add to a friend's  Irrigation-Mart type mulch layer, to prevent his drip tape from swarming.  The factory spools are made of cardboard and if they ever get wet, they will disintegrate, leaving you a heck of a mess on your hands.

Side view.

End view.

View with discs and drag wheels raised for transport and storage.

Detail of locking pins and adjusting knobs on back.  Every part of this machine is adjustable for making custom beds.  I use 48" plastic in mine.  There are options to use 36" to 72" rolls but I've not used any other size than 48" inch.  The linch pin in the bottom right corner is one I added to lock the heavy disc and wheels in place for loading, travel, and storage.  (I don't know why the factory didn't think of this?)

View from other side.

Detail of lifting pins on right side of machine. (The linch pin used in the bottom left corner of this setup is one I added), to hold the drag wheels and disks extra high for traveling.  I don't know why the factory didn't think of this?

[theozarkan]

I saw some of those in front of their store when I was up there back in April. I picked up a couple rolls of ground cover and some fertilizer.

[heavyhitterokra]

That's an awesome store. I love that place!

[woodeye]

I like it. I like it a lot. Looks like a dream machine to me, and would be fun to use.

I don't have a garden area big enough to justify having one, but I can see how this would be a huge time and labor saver for you.

Years ago I bought a row builder from Steven's Tractor, it's in Louisiana. It works great for building ridges, plus it hills potatoes like nobody's business. 

I've bought lots of seeds from Morgan County Seeds, they usually have the best prices around. That's where I bought the Top Pick Purple Hull cowpea seed, which my deer adored...

The other day I was researching plastic mulch to see if it will keep nutsedge from growing through it. From what I read, it won't stop nutsedge.

If it would stop it, I'd at least use plastic mulch for that, just apply it manually.

Anyway, Thanks for the pictures & info!

[heavyhitterokra]

I've never had anything grow through my plastic mulch unless it was damaged while pulling. A friend of mine had some very rough, first year ground to cover once; it was full of tree roots, sharp sticks, and pointed rocks. The plastic was heavily damaged by debris, but it still worked quite well. We only had to pull weeds from the torn spots.

[hmoosek]

Oh my gosh, I hate nut grass! My first garden, I was in the 5th grade. I’d spend the weekend at Grandmas and come home and try to do what she and my Uncle had shown me. My little garden area was full of nut grass! I had no way to till the ground, but I’d bring transplants home and set them out. I don’t know if you can kill that stuff or not, but I sure hated walking on it in bare feet! I had a porter, both red and yellow pear tomatoes. I got ambitious and tried to grow corn, but it was a complete failure.

[woodeye]

My first reaction when seeing nutsedge coming up is to pull the stuff, but according to the experts that just spreads it worse because of the underground dormant nutlets. When a sprout of it is pulled, it awakens the dormant nutlets close by somehow and away it goes again. It does say that if you keep pulling it out of the ground that it will eventually weaken it and it will die. But if the ground is hard and dry, you can't pull it out root and all, it breaks off. It doesn't matter how hard the ground is though, that stuff will come up. It looks like a needle when it pops through the surface.

There are specialized killers for it, I think a couple of the brands at least might eventually kill it. But none of them say it will kill it right away, it may take several applications. That's why I was interested in plastic mulch, just to see if it would kill it, or at least stop it in its tracks. Since I wouldn't be doing a lot of rows, probably only 2 rows for okra 50 feet long, I think it would be a good gamble to go with the plastic mulch instead of going the chemical route.

Another reason my land is limited for gardening is that my dad sprigged bermuda grass all over the place. I know it too can be gotten rid of, but it's a major job to do it. On top of that I have acres of wild blackberries. So to sum it up, I have too many cedar trees, too much bermuda grass, too many blackberry vines, and way too many deer. But I have my garden terrace that is about 80 feet long and 40 feet wide. All it has is nutsedge, and visiting deer...

I agree with both of you. I think it's worth a try, Ron. And yes, it is nasty stuff to deal with, hmoosek...

[hmoosek]

Woodeye you made remember my first garden. Lots of happy memories. On TV there used to be an AG guy newscaster named Johnny Watkins that had a 30 minute program. He would give Little tips for gardening along with the price of beef, wheat, cotton etc. one thing I remember him saying about tomatoes was to take a tin can, punch it full of holes and bury it out a bit from your tomato plant. That way, you could take some fertilizer put it in the can and water it in real good to get it down towards the roots quicker. I haven’t thought about it in a long time, but that was one of my first projects in my first garden. I should try that again sometime. I don’t think I’ve tried it since a half a century ago. Hahahaha!

[woodeye]

hmoosek, The closest I came to that was in 2018. On my tomato row I used 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom of them. I dug a hole for the buckets to sit in so they wouldn't leak except through the holes I had drilled in the bottom. Then I surrounded each 5 gallon bucket with 4 tomato plants. Seems like I had 10 buckets out there, so that's 40 plants. Every couple of weeks I'd throw some 21-0-0 into each bucket, then fill the bucket with water. I used pieces of 1/2 inch PVC for the individual tomato poles, then used garment elastic to tie the tomato plants to the poles. It worked pretty good I suppose. These were all plants I grew from seed in my greenhouse, so I had to put tags on the fence with their names so I would know what I had planted. I got to eat 30 different varieties of tomatoes that summer and the Cherokee Carbons were the best tomatoes in the patch...

[heavyhitterokra]

Woodeye, that is beautiful!  Gotta love that red dirt.  Mine isn't red, but it's mostly rocks.  in some places, there is no soil at all, it's just rocks.  My garden has about 8" inches of topsoil, then about 18" inches of red clay.  Any deeper than 18" inches and it's all creek gravel.  I have a hill about 30' feet tall and so steep you can barely climb it that is all chert rocks the size of footballs.  It would be a good place to build a castle if I wasn't getting so old.

When we started out here about 18-years ago, we had 5-acres of junk to clean up.  It was a foreclosure and was a huge mess, but that was a blessing in disguise because we wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise.  There was a wild plum thicket so dense across about two acres of it that I could cut about ten trees with a chainsaw before any one of them would fall over. My sons and I just crawled through it on our hands and knees, cutting plum trees as we went.

Another acre or so was solid blackberry bushes, and buckhorn sumac bushes. There were green briars and possum grapes hanging from the tops of old growth oak trees that resembled the rope rigging of an old sailing ship.  I cut a wide firebreak around all of it with weed eater rigged with a saw blade, then tilled the perimeter as a fire break and lit the whole thing on fire during the drought of 2006. It burned with such intensity, that there was a bed of coals on the ground for several hours after the fire swept through.

After the fire, the next Spring, when it rained, about a million blackberry and sumac sprouts popped up. We went out there in the mud and pulled blackberry vines and roots until our elbows were disjointed. Then we pulled the sumac and all the runners. We had a pile of them about the size of a pickup truck by the time we were through, then we lit that on fire and tilled the entire place under. I borrowed a backhoe after that and swept the plum stumps out with the bucket teeth. People had been using these 5 acres as an illegal dump site for many years before it grew up with underbrush, so we hauled off several tons of old cars, trucks, hot water tanks, washers, dryers, and old refrigerators before we could use it for anything.  We picked up several 50-pound sacks of busted glass.

We cut old-growth timber off of the other parts for firewood, leaving the trees spaced about 20' to 50' feet apart, and made that into a camp ground for riders along the TAT (Trans-America Trail).  I ran electricity out there for lights at night and ran water for washing camp dishes and irrigation for the half-acre garden.

It took about 10 years to clear it all where we can mow it and keep it maintained now.

It was a lot of hard work, but I believe it was well worth the effort. We turned it into a certified organic garden, an apple orchard, an elderberry, and thornless blackberry patch, a free-range chicken and endangered species goose habitat, a bluebird sanctuary, a campground, and a 9 hole golf course. It's like having our own park, right in our back yard.  It takes about 6-hours of labor and 4-gallons of gas to mow it all.    It's a lot of work to maintain, but we enjoy it and use it a lot.

[woodeye]

Thank you, HeavyHitter. It was just one of my experimental garden ideas, I haven't done it since, but am thinking about it again for next year. I know, that red dirt looks bizarre to some folks. I used to have a friend at Okay that would come and visit me once in awhile. He'd scoop up some red dirt and take it home so his boy could take it to school and show it off. 

Wow! Your endeavor was much, much more involved. In addition to all the tons of debris you sifted, shoveled, pushed, pulled, hauled, etc., it also must have taken tons of dedication and hard work to stay at it for 10 years, but I'm sure you are happy with the result. My hat is off to you sir, it sounds like an awesome place you have...

[heavyhitterokra]

That was a good story, woodeye.  Okay, is not too far from here. I used to drive right through Okay, on my way to work at the Fort Howard Papermill, 5 days per week. Not too far from where you used to work at the OG&E Powerhouse. My grandparents were cotton sharecroppers in Okay when my Mom was growing up.  I can't imagine having good topsoil like that around here.

[macmex]

I grew up barefoot during the summers, in NJ. We had nutsedge growing all over our lawn, at first, when we first moved into our home. That stuff was a nightmare for bare feet! I don't know how my Dad did it, but he eliminated it. Every now and then I find a plant of it in my garden and I've managed to kill it by weeding it out. I think when it's not super abundant and a person diligently pulls it, it can be eliminated.

When our oldest daughter was born we were studying Spanish at Rio Grande Bible Institute, in Texas. For financial reasons we chose to use a midwife service run by the Catholic Church, called Holy Family Clinic (if I recall correctly). They helped migrant workers and folk who didn't have the money for regular services. I have to say that the sisters at Holy Family blessed us no end. For one, we got first class help for a total of $400. Secondly, Sister Angela, the head nun, attended to us personally. She had delivered hundreds, maybe thousands of babies. Our daughter's birth was complicated and we nearly lost her, but for the skill of Sister Angela. 

She not only did a fantastic job with the birth, but she worked on keeping me calm by discussing gardening during lulls. Sister Angela was a dedicated gardener. Anyway, one of her comments which I remember was about nutsedge. She said, "Oh yes, you can kill it by weeding it. You just have to keep pulling until it stops coming back up."

[woodeye]

HeavyHitter, you are right there, the soil in that area is rich and plentiful. I'm jealous of it. It reminds me of the river bottom soil down by Mcloud. I remember seeing soybean fields that stretched farther than I could see. Every year. On up towards Coweta I've seen soil like that too. The only river close to me here is the Deep Fork river, 3 miles or so away, so there is zero river bottom land on this place. But you know how it goes, we just have to make the best of it, regardless of the situation...

macmex, I don't know how nutsedge got started in my garden spots. I don't remember seeing it out there 15 years ago, and it's something that a person doesn't just forget. It may be that I ran across a few sprigs of it sometime or another with my tractor tiller and spread it that way. And you know it's not shy about spreading. I could keep pulling the stuff out of the ground here if I kept the garden well watered, but that is the only way it can be done in this soil. When it get dry it's like a brick, and the nutsedge is impossible to pull out without breaking it. If just breaking it at ground level would weaken it and eventually kill it, I suppose I could use the weedeater on the garden twice a week. Since I don't have any crops out there this summer, I'm experimenting by running the tractor tiller over it every week to stir it up and hopefully bring a lot of it to the top and let the hot sun kill it. I may be just making things worse, who knows?

That is a cool story you wrote about the nun. She definitely saved the day for you all by delivering your daughter. And a calming nun that knows about gardening would be hard to come by I imagine. Certainly happy that it worked out for you all...

[Deleted]

I primarily use light suppression for new garden beds.  Bermuda.  I use some chipboard I have on hand.  It's a dense cardboard material that takes about 5 to 7 years to decompose without assistance.  Plastic would be way better.  My main plot began as a 25' x 35' plot in Feb 2019.  The Bermuda required me to dig out the base of the main established plants intermittently.  I'd check it from time to time and see how it was doing and noticed the larger established Bermuda plants were still alive so I just dug them out to weaken the main system.

I had boatloads of nutsedge in this yard.  Everything but the Bermuda and some sickly dock plants was dead in under 3 mos, including the nutsedge.  The Bermuda took about 7 mos.  Disturbance causes some nutsedge to pop up every now and then which I trowel out from the root.  In my experience, it was helpful to have the light suppression atop when the heavy spring rains hit because the coverage would not dry off and things would drown.  This would be even more prevalent with plastic.  

The whole thing was ready in November 2019.  I wood chipped the walkways, composted the beds and there was not a weed in sight.