Garden Travels: Crop Protection Covers

One of the great things about traveling to other countries and visiting other gardens is that you get wonderful ideas. Then you can put them into practice in your own garden. Today, I want to show you some of the crop protection covers I saw while traveling through England last month.

I’m referring to the methods gardeners used to keep insects and critters away from susceptible crops. Cabbage family crops (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale) or berry plants can always use some extra protection.

Check out all of the ingenious crop protection covers!

So let’s take a look at what I saw. I’m hoping they will give you ideas. You’ll notice they were using some natural materials like branches or bamboo stakes to support the covers.

In the first 2 photos, you’re looking at pea plantings. They are from Sissinghurst Castle and the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They’ve used large branches for pea supports as well as to cover the plantings with netting. It was my understanding that rabbits are quite a problem in England. I believe some of the netting was to keep them out. I also suspect the tall netting was to keep birds away from them, but am not certain. However, I feel the openings in the netting would be too large to keep insects away.

    

In the next two photos, the gardeners used a very fine, lightweight screen to cover their cabbage family crops. This would be for insect control. The first photo was taken in Avebury Manor garden and the second was in the garden at Stourhead.

       

For those who grow strawberries and get frustrated by birds eating them, how about the next two ideas? The photo on the left (from Sissinghurst) is of the ultimate strawberry crop protection! They had made frames with metal pipes and attached bird netting to them. Perhaps it’s also to keep rabbits away. In the photo below, they used small metal hoops to support netting over the rows of strawberry plants.

    

The next three photos show netting covering cabbage family crops, again for insect control. Photos #1 and #3: Chartwell (Churchill’s home), photo #2: Sissinghurst. A gardener told me how the zippered cover was something new they were excited to try this year. I wonder if something like that is sold in the States? (or maybe I could make one?)

      

The last 2 photos were taken in Avebury Manor garden. They illustrate a method for caging berry plants to keep birds from eating the fruit. The structures were quite simple and covered with bird netting.

   OK, are you heading out to your garden next, to see what you can create?