Cheap cloche ideas?

Cappster

Things are eating my spinach. They were eating my lettuce, but I covered it up with a Lidl plastic-bag hoopy thing and they moved on to my spinach instead. It's covered in netting, but that made no difference. Nor the slug pellets. :mad:

I'm wondering whether I should cobble something together or invest in something for the next few years - I'm going to be growing veg from now on since my husband built lovely new raised beds so it's a false economy to grow things for pests to eat. I'm not really happy with the Lidl plastic hoopy thing since it looks like it's on its last legs even after a week, and the kids can't even see what's growing since it's covered in a limp plastic bag :undecided

Any ideas? Should I bite the bullet and go to the garden centre? What do you suggest?

Janey3

I use the large cheap plastic pop bottles, cut in half width-wise, over the plant, with the open neck of the bottle at the top for air. OH drinks a lot of pop/bottled water so I save them up.I also got a plastic cloche from Poundland, a bit flimsy but it's working at the moment.

RedLass

Janey3 wrote: »

I use the large cheap plastic pop bottles, cut in half width-wise, over the plant, with the open neck of the bottle at the top for air. OH drinks a lot of pop/bottled water so I save them up.I also got a plastic cloche from Poundland, a bit flimsy but it's working at the moment.

We have done the same and used large empty squash bottles a few times this year, the fat double concentrate Robinson's ones, and they've been useful for a while. We buy it to drink so the bottles come "free"... but I've seen these which would be better:

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=267832188

5L bottled water £1.10 in Tesco. They are bigger than the squash bottles and would be good for covering slightly larger plants, at least in their early days. Not entirely obvious from the picture but they are square IYSWIM.

Only reason I haven't gone for them is that I don't really know what I'd do with the water... our tap water is perfectly nice for drinking so I wouldn't ordinarily buy it. I suppose I could use it to water the garden but that feels a bit wrong!

They're not ideal for every situation though. Salad leaves for example that are growing over an area rather than as single plants - I'm not sure how I'll cope with this, the slugs had a lot of fun at my expense last year.

geoffky

Go to the pound shop they sell netting and those plastic cable ties...put the two nets together using cable ties...

rolstherat

Poundland do a half meter polythene poly tunnel

Janey3

Thanks for the link, Redlass, will look out for them.

valk_scot

It depends on what exactly is eating your produce. If it's slugs and snails you need to use something like crushed egg shells, sharp sand, grit or slug pellets scattered round the plants. If it's insects try environmesh stretched over hoops of sturdy wire or alkathene piping. Environmesh is not as cheap as fleece but it will last for years, it allows water to pass through freely and gives a degree or two of weather protection without making it too humid under the mesh. It will stop almost all airborne insects, including the tiny carrot fly.

You can buy ready made cloches and tunnels of course but they seldom fit home build beds well, unless the bed was designed to fit the product. Scrap alkathene piping hoops, environmesh by the metre and some ground fixing pegs will fit any bed neatly. For a standard 1.2m bed use a 2.0m length of pipe, push a short thick garden cane into each corner of the bed, slip the pipe over the canes to make a hoop at either end pushing the pipe a little way into the ground as well. You may need an extra hoop or two part way down the bed if it's a long bed.

Netting, fleece and environmesh comes in 2m widths so will fit neatly over these hoops once they're pushed in a couple of inches, a wider mesh gives a better overlap along the edges but you end up with an unwieldy wodge of excess fabric along one edge, whitch is a pitb.

Eenymeeny

Lots of good ideas here thanks. I'm losing aubretia (I watched blackbirds doing it) now I'm losing the tops of ferns and new chrysanthemums. I suspect field mice...?
I don't really want to look like I'm growing plastic bottles in my garden. Has anyone any other ideas please and will it just be when the growth is new? (I'm using large jam jars and a big basket at the moment!:o
Sorry to hijack your thread:o Thanks for any suggestions:)

RedLass

Thanks valk_scot that's really helpful. I have some net strung over canes with plastic bottles on top at the moment, but it's for keeping big pests off (cats) rather than bugs. I find it a bit of a pain if I need to get in and weed etc, and I think your hooped approach may be easier to manage.

I remembered last night that I have this year used an upturned clear plastic storage box for protecting baby plants outside, a bit like a mini greenhouse I suppose. As the plants got taller I raised the box up by just sitting it on a brick at each side. Not very useful for keeping slugs off of lettuces but helpful for other reasons - mostly our wildly changing weather at the moment.

For slugs I'm using beer traps. It's helping a bit, but I've still lost the tops of two swede seedlings.