This is a very good thing to do during the dry season. In case you don’t know, mulching means covering the soil with something to prevent the bad effect of intense sunlight on the soil. Intense sunlight evaporates water and makes it unavailable for plants. This increases the cost of irrigation also. The sun can also kill a lot of beneficial microorganisms in the soil.


You can mulch with organic materials like cut grasses, leaves and other plant materials. But if you don’t have access to them in large quantity, you can use nylon. It may be somehow costly, but you can reuse them a number of times – depending on the quality. I’ve not tried this before, but from my little research they said it works and so I’ll test it later. If anyone has experience about this, please share. Least I forget, mulching also suppress weed growth, so you save time and money.

Here's an image from nairaland: http://www.nairaland.com/2015314/modern-...-million/2

Great tip, next is practicalizing it.

Yes, you are right. I used it in my cucumber farm and it works very well. But it is very stressful (putting it on) and I couldn't use it for the whole land.

Yes it can be very stressful but rewarding. But once u succeed u won't have to repeat it for several seasons.

With plastic mulching you need to have some sort of irrigation under the mulch to get water to the root region of the plant,

(03-21-2017, 11:11 PM)folabo Wrote: With plastic mulching you need to have some sort of irrigation under the mulch to get water to the root region of the plant,

Correct. You may also have to apply all the phosphorus & potassium fertilizers and any manure before putting the mulch. Then nitrogen fertilizer can be dissolved in water and applied with the irrigation water. This require some technical know-how to avoid burning plants roots with too much fertilizer.