Allotment netting / protecting plants

[Mirinjawbro]

Hello all

This year we have decided we want to cover the fruit / veg with netting ( or similar)

Anyone have any recommendations please ?

Last year ther were alot of weeds and eaten salad as we did not cover

Thankyou

[allegro]

The two standard methods are canes with upturned plant pots to form a frame for the netting or use plastic water pipe and form arches over the beds to form the frame. much easier if you have a wooden raised bed and can pin the netting taught over the frame to keep out pigeons

[sherman]

We actually have a mini polytunnel frame that we use to hold the net over our raised bed.
Its been up about 5 years and is like new

Mini Polytunnel 4ft (1.22m) Wide | First Tunnels https://share.google/dmAPr1xUrEAR9fYcu

You can buy all the fittings seperatly on that site to suit your setup too.

[Mirinjawbro]

Thankyou

They are raised currently. About 6 inches or so in a rectangle

Will look

Thankyou

[Harpoon]

For raised beds with vegetables, we've got a few sets of alloy poles from Gardening Naturally - 16mm uprights and 13mm cross members. If you want to go taller (up to 2.2m), you can go to 19mm poles throughout. GN don't sell the plastic connectors to have 19mm upright and 13mm cross members.

https://gardening-naturally.com/collections/fruit-...

We then buy big rolls of fine mesh scaffold netting from eBay and cut / cable tie that to the poles to make an enclosed "bunker". Overlap the joints to avoid anything sneaking in. Use bricks or pegs to keep the mesh tight at the bottom.

That setup stops birds / butterflies (caterpillars) etc from trashing your craps but you still get weeds. We will sometimes put down a cover of weed fabric and then cut holes for each plant.