Does Colored Mulch Improve Tomato Growing?

If you’re a die-hard tomato grower, you’ve probably heard about using red plastic mulch to improve your yield and get your tomatoes to ripen earlier. Some early testing did show a considerable benefit from mulching with a specific shade of red plastic. But like all things scientific in the garden,there are still a lot of variables that prevent the results  from being conclusive.

 

The idea behind using red mulch is that it reflects and bounces far-red light wavelengths back up into your tomato plants. These red light wavelengths stimulate the growth of tomato plants through a reaction with a specific pigment in the tomato plants (phytochrome). This seems to be true, but it also seems to be dependent on the amount of sunlight and maybe even temperature - something very much out of our control.