Intensive Vegetable Production with Row Covers

Abstract

Horticulturists have, from antiquity, attempted to circumvent climate-imposed limitations to crop production. The challenge has been to modify effectively both the predictive and nonpredictive elements of weather to take advantage of out-of-season production. Although there has been little, if any, success in actually controlling the weather, the progress in compensating for low temperatures has been phenomenal. One such compensatory factor has been the use of row covers for temperature modification. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to review the recent advances in using row covers for vegetable production, and to speculate on their potential uses in horticulture.