Thanks to my University of California Cooperative Extension colleagues, I visited central valley vegetable production last week. Undoubtedly, I learned a lot on this trip. I want to share what I learned with Indiana growers in a few newsletter articles. This short article highlights two things I saw farmers use to extend early-season crop production. In a large watermelon field, I found watermelons are grown on clear plastic (Figure 1). Dr. Zheng Wang, the vegetable crop advisor at the University of California Cooperative Extension, told me that the large-scale watermelon growers use clear plastic for the early crops. The purpose is to warm the soil and get a fast-growing crop. He said the nighttime temperature was in the 50s°F after the crop was planted about a month ago. The watermelons were fast-growing under clear plastic mulch. Occasionally, I saw weeds under the clear plastic. But in general, the crop looks excellent. On a diversified Asian vegetable farm, we saw every pepper plant surrounded by a styrofoam cup (Figure 2). This approach also protected the plants from cool temperatures at the beginning of the season.
![Figure 1. Watermelon is grown with clear plastic mulch.](https://vegcropshotline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/watermelon-on-clear-plastic-300x225.jpeg)
Figure 1. Watermelons are on clear plastic mulch.
![Figure 2. Pepper plant grown inside a Styrofoam cup](https://vegcropshotline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/styrofom-cup-225x300.jpeg)
Figure 2. Pepper plants grow in a foam cup