For watermelon seedlings, the narrow black strips across
Georgia farm fields are
the fast lanes to holiday produce markets.

"If everything goes well, we’ll be cutting fruit in
70 to 75 days," said Oren
Childers as he looked over some of his 200 acres of melons.
"If we didn’t have the
black plastic, it would take 85 to 90 days."

Acres of melons on
plastic

Childers farms in Crisp County, where farmers plant
more watermelons than any other
Georgia county. On as much as 3,500 of the 5,000 acres of
melons there, growers plant
their sweet crop in rows covered by black plastic.

"Most of our farmers have gone to growing
watermelons on plastic," said Ken
Lewis, a Crisp County agent with the University of Georgia
Extension Service.
"The benefits of the plastic
are tremendous, and it has become extremely
popular."

Statewide, Georgia farmers plant about 60 percent of
their 35,000 watermelon acres
using black plastic. The main reason they do, Childers
said, is to speed up the growing
process.

Holiday market
window

"We have a small market window we’re shooting
for," Childers said. "We
want to get our melons to market from about the 10th of
June to the first of July."

The key is to get the melons to market on or before the
Fourth of July holiday, he
said. As a rule, the demand for watermelons falls off so
sharply after the holiday that
prices drop dramatically.

Plastic helps nurture
plants

If they just plant earlier to meet the market, growers
face greater risks of lethal
late frosts and other early-season perils.

The black plastic draws the sun’s warmth into the soil
while conserving moisture,
getting the tender seedlings off to a fast start.

Good for shoppers,
too

In the Georgia melons’ race to holiday picnic tables,
shoppers are big winners, too.

"The black plastic enables us to enjoy high-
quality watermelons grown here in
Georgia earlier in the season," said Darbie
Granberry, an Extension Service horticulturist with
the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Getting higher prices for farmers, Granberry said,
doesn’t mean shoppers must pay more.
Oddly enough, the growers’ higher prices could mean the
opposite for the people who buy
them.

Supply and demand
rules

"It’s a supply-and-demand thing," Granberry
said. "The demand is simply
much higher before the Fourth of July. If a big supply
isn’t there, consumers may pay
tremendously higher prices."

Using the plastic row covers, growers are able to
provide much better supplies of
early-market watermelons, he said. If anything, the higher
supplies bring prices down.

Farmers must manage more
carefully

Growers must pay $75 to $80 more per acre to cover the
cost of the plastic and of
laying it down and disposing of it at the end of the
season. That may indirectly lead to
better quality melons, too.

With a shorter growing season and more money invested,
Granberry said, growers tend to
manage their fields more intensely.

"They’re trying to produce a quality product at
reasonable prices," he said.
"The plastic just helps them do that."