Exploring Paper Mulch for Small-Scale No-Till Organic Farming in the Northeast

Commodities

• Fruits: berries (strawberries)
• Vegetables: cucurbits, eggplant, garlic, greens (lettuces), onions, peppers, tomatoes

Practices

• Crop Production: no-till
• Pest Management: mulches - general

On this project, our small-scale, no-till, mixed fruit and vegetable farm will explore the use of paper mulch in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. Paper mulch is attractive as a weed control alternative to more widely used plastic mulches. It is more sustainable because it doesn’t use plastic, avoids the environmental residues of plastics, and does not have the potential to introduce microplastics into the foods we are selling. However, paper mulch can be time-consuming to use, and we have not seen any local discussions of the costs and benefits of paper mulch in our area. On this pilot study we will measure the yield to effort ratio of using a readily available paper mulch product for weed control vs. unmulched matched plots for different crops. This will provide information to other no and low-till farms in this area interested in sustainable practices on whether and when it makes sense to use paper mulch for weed control.

We wish to see for which crops the effort of using paper mulch for weed control is worthwhile on a small-scale, no-till market farm.

By effort we mean the time involved in from bed preparation to harvesting (and including all steps in between including weeding).

By worthwhile we mean the weight or dollar value of crop harvested.

We expect the main expenses of paper mulch will be in time spent on bed preparation and seeding or transplanting, and the main benefits will come from reduced weed pressure and reduced time weeding. However, our aim is to measure benefit as the amount of crop harvested regardless of weeds or other differences. Our output variable is how much marketable product we can harvest for a given effort.