Tomatoes & Peppers: TOMATOES season 2012 starting soon in zone 8a, 1 by terri_emory

terri_emory wrote:
1lisac, last year I put my tomatoes out the first week in March. I used the red plastic mulch and the clear plastic with holes from Territorial. I cannot say that the red plastic did anything as far as actual tomato production or development; but it did keep the weeds down and it did, with the combination of the clear plastic, warm the soil temps up by about 10 degrees on a sunny day. I originally set up this system due to the constant and sometimes heavy winds we get out at my house. The previous year my tomatoes were torn to shreads by the wind. It did work for the wind problem. Once it warms up towards May or so the winds seem to die back a little although this past year it was windy almost all the time (a combination of winds and high heat had a blow-dryer effect on all my plants this past summer). So I watched the temps (soil and air) and once they are acceptable I removed the clear plastic and the cattle panels and Florida weave worked very well with the winds.