There are several ways to plant vegetables in black plastic and woven landscape fabric. Peter Richards shows how to plant vegetable transplants and seeds in sheet mulch. Once the sheet mulch is laid, he shows how to use a knife or blowtorch to cut holes where you can plant. He also shows how to plant rows of seeds.
See how to lay this sheet mulch: https://youtu.be/_h7mmOy717Q
*Here are links to the products we used* (Amazon Affiliate Links):
*3mil Black Plastic Sheeting* : https://amzn.to/3ZmblPn
*Woven Landscape Fabric* : https://amzn.to/4mlWa2G
*Landscape Staples* : https://amzn.to/3GZJBdd
0:00 – Introduction
0:10 – General Tips for Planting in Sheet Mulches
0:37 – Planting Transplants in Black Plastic
3:05 – Planting Seeds in Black Plastic
4:55 – Planting Transplants in Woven Landscape Fabric
6:33 – Planting Seeds in Woven Landscape Fabric
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so what are we about to do?
– Yeah, so we’ve put down these mulches. – Yeah?
– And now we have to plant our plants. Now, a lot of times it’s
easiest to plant your plants after you put the mulch down,
’cause then you don’t have to fit the mulch around the plant.
So that’s what we did here, especially with these sheet mulches,
which is what we’re gonna be planting in today. – Okay. – You wanna make sure
you put the mulch down first and then plant through it.
– Right. – So all six of these sections of our garden are gonna be planted the same.
So we’re gonna put the same plants in each sheet so we can kinda compare how the mulches do.
– Okay. – So what we’re gonna have is we’re gonna have,
we have three rows. We’re gonna have one row of flowers.
– Okay. – Okay? We’re gonna have one row that is a tomato and two pepper plants.
And we’re gonna have one row that is some beans and watermelon.
– Got it. – And so we just go ahead
and start planting, I guess. – Okay, let’s go ahead and do it.
– So, on this particular section, this is gonna be our flowers,
So we’re not gonna worry about that. We’re gonna plant those another time.
– Got it, okay. – So, let’s do our tomatoes and, excuse me, yeah, our tomatoes and peppers first. And for this kind of mulch, [Chris chuckling]
– Ah! – the easiest way to do it is to just cut a little cross.
– Yeah. – So, I do have irrigation in here, irrigation lines.
So there’s one of my lines right there. I wanna make sure that I’m close to the line,
but I don’t cut the line. – Yeah, we don’t wanna do that.
– Yeah, that wouldn’t be good. So it’s pretty easy.
All I do is I just make a little cross here. And now I have the soil exposed.
– Okay, so just wide enough to put the plant material in there.
– Yeah, just wide enough to put the plant material in there.
We have Better Bush tomatoes that we’re gonna plant. – Better Bush.
– These are determinate. Meaning that they will grow to a certain size,
pretty much stop growing, and then put on all of their fruit at once.
– Okay. – The reason why we’re doing this is ’cause we do have a limited space here.
– Yeah. – And honestly, I didn’t wanna build six tomato trellises.
– Right, I got you ’cause you definitely need ’em
– Yeah. – For indeterminates. – Yep, so we chose the determinate.
– Okay. – So it’s nicely rooted. – Yeah, good root system.
– Yep! So I’m just gonna go ahead and… – So we don’t have to plan ’em too deep, right?
– Nope, just plan them at the depth that it was in the nursery.
Although these are tomatoes so I am gonna plant it a little deeper. – Okay.
Just a little bit, okay. – Because all the little hairs
on the side of a tomato plant can be roots if they’re underground.
So, I’m just gonna go ahead and plant that a little deeper than it was in the pot.
– Okay, and we got that right next to your… – Yep, and our irrigation line is right here.
– Okay. – So that should get lots of water. – Good.
That’s right there. – Then we’ll just… – Again with the cross.
– Yep, just a cross right there. And once you’ve started it,
if you need it a little bigger you can just go ahead
and kinda stretch it a little bit. – And it does stretch.
– Yep. – There’s some give. – And so with these though,
I do want to plant them at container depth for the peppers.
So once again, really nice roots. I’m just gonna kinda tease
those up just a little bit. And plant that right there.
– Yeah, that’s good. – So that’s a bell pepper. – Yeah, let’s make sure we get this
nutsedge out of there. – Oh yes, that’s good. – Yeah. – Because, yeah, nutsedge
will take advantage of any open spot you have and this area does have a lot of nutsedge.
Okay, so those are plants that came in pots. We’re also gonna plant beans and watermelons.
– Got it, and we’re gonna do that on this side. – And we’re gonna do that over there.
– So let me grab the seed packets here. And I think what we’re gonna do
is we’re gonna plant the watermelon here so that it can run
– Yeah. – Into our walkways and kinda use this space
as opposed to running out onto the grass. – ‘Cause this is gonna sprawl.
– Yeah, so here’s our irrigation line right here. And so what I’m gonna do
is I’m gonna do this a little different.
I’m just gonna cut a slit right here. – Okay, all right.
– And then I grab my trowel here and we’re gonna go ahead and-
– So, you gonna mound it up a little bit? – I’m not really gonna mound it that much.
What I’m gonna do is I just basically did a trench.
– Okay. – Once these come up and we’ve chosen our plants,
go ahead and put one of the staples that’s holding the plastic down right there,
to just kinda keep this from, you know, opening up more
and letting more weeds grow. – Okay, I got it. – So we’ll do that. – Makes sense.
– Okay, now, we got string beans. Yes, so these are pole beans.
– Okay. – And this is going to… We’re gonna go ahead and plant two rows.
So here’s our irrigation line right here. And we’re gonna plant two rows
and they’re gonna be kinda longer because, you know, beans,
you need a lot of plants. – Peter, as you’re doing
that, the sun has popped out and you can definitely feel the heat
coming off of this plastic. – Yes, part of our experiment here is
I’m really curious to know how these plants do with such a dark surface that they’re growing in.
Because I could easily see that possibly some of these plants
are gonna die from the heat. – From the heat.
– But we’ll find out. – Yeah, yeah. – That’s why we’re doing this experiment.
And I’m doing ’em about two inches apart. – About two inches, all right.
– Four inches is what they’ll grow at. So that gives me some options
when it comes to thinning. So this is the landscape fabric.
– Right. – It’s like, it’s kinda has the texture of a light tarp.
It does let the light through. Or excuse me, not the light through.
It does let some water through There’s another option.
With this, you can use a torch and just burn holes in the sheet.
Now, one of the other advantages of using the torch
is that because this is woven when you cut it, it likes to fray. – Yeah.
– If you burn it, it’s not gonna fray, – No fray. – Because it melts the edge.
– Got it. – What I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna take this,
– Oh! – and there we go, burned a hole – Look at that, easy.
– in the plastic, yeah. – Okay. – It’s really easy.
Now, in a minute I’ll show you how to do it with a knife too
because not everybody has a blowtorch. – Right, got it in there. – Put the tomato in.
– Yeah, there you go. – The other nice thing about the blowtorch is
if you know exactly where your stuff’s gonna be, you can just go through and
go burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn. – Yeah, quick and easy.
– Yeah, it’s easy. – Yeah. – For this next one though,
same thing as the other one, we’re just gonna cut an X.
– And that was the frays you’re talking about.
– Yeah, so if you notice, it’s really frayed here. – Yeah, it sure is.
– You could, if you wanted to, you could get a lighter or something like that
and melt the edges, kinda like you would a rope,
just to keep the fray from coming out. I’m gonna go ahead and just tuck this under here, but yeah, this is…
– Yeah, it’s a lot. – Yep. – Ah yeah, right next to the line, good.
– Yep, so it should get lots of good water. [torch blowing]
– Awesome. – I will say ouch, it is a little warm still.
[Chris laughs] But not terrible. – Not terrible.
– So now let’s go over and do our beans and our watermelons.
I’m gonna go ahead and use torch again. [torch blowing] Okay, so there we go.
Notice no fraying at all. So we’re gonna trench here. So we’ll put our five seeds in here.
That’s one, two, three, – Wow! – Four, five.
– I almost can’t see those. – Yeah, no, they’re the same colors
as the soil, for sure. Okay? So there’s those. – Okay.
– Now, I’m going to…where’s my line? Here’s my line.
So I’m gonna take my drip line. I’m gonna put it right there.
Okay, so now let’s do the beans. We’re gonna cut this hole instead of burning it. Let’s see here.
Where is our, there is our tube right there. – Yep.
– Yep, so we’re gonna do one right here. [tarp ripping] – Yeah.
– And we’ll do another one right here. Okay. – All right.
– So one of the things is if you are good enough,
I’m not, to cut right down the line, the fraying is minimal.
You do have some here and it will likely continue to fray
through the summer. You know, this will probably
become totally threadbare by the end of it, but that’s okay.
– With the heat. – Yeah, that’s fine. Okay. There we go.
So now we have our test plant in synthetic mulch here.
Let’s actually, since we can, let’s go ahead and drag our irrigation hose
right between those two. – Yeah, okay. – Okay, so all we need to do now
is we’re gonna need to water. – Okay. – And then just take care
of any weeds that do come up. There will be a couple, – There will be some.
– But this should keep down most of the weeds. – Okay, we shall see.
Thank you, Peter, for that demonstration.
– Thank you. – All right. [upbeat country music]