Mkulima today your farm production is the key to your agribusiness success. Today we cover ways of boosting your tomato farm production, we cover how to do mulching for tomatoes.

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Tomatoes harvesting and storage tips

10 tips for growing tomatoes in abundance

How to fight bacterial wilt in tomatoes.

How to do mulching for tomatoes on the farm

Much your tomatoes to prevent

  • soil erosion
  • water loss through evaporation
  • nourish soil life
  • suppress weeds
  • increase soil organic matter and
  • provide nutrients

Benefits of mulching

Mulching your crops increases the moisture level on the soil reducing instances of blossom end rot diseases that affect tomatoes resulting in losses and poor yields.

Guide

As a farmer, you need to mulch tomatoes by spreading dry plant material such as

  • Straw
  • Leaves
  • Crops residue or
  • Plastic material upon the surface of the soil.

Plastic mulch is thin plastic sheeting covering the soil. Crops grow through slits in the plastic and are watered by use of drip irrigation.

Spread the straw on the beds after transplanting when the young plants have grown and become hardier.

This is to avoid harming the young plants that would naturally lead to huge losses.

During mulching spread the mulch by hand or with a rake in a layer. If your farm is located in a wet climatic region, use thin layers while if in a dry climatic region use thick layers of mulch.

Spread the mulch material before or at the onset of the rainy period or season. When applying mulch before transplanting use a thin layer to allow seedlings to enable penetration of the plant roots into the soil with ease.

Young quickly rotting materials will provide nutrients to the soil within a short period of time.

Slowly decomposing crop residues given even longer soil protection.

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