The No-spray Way to Protect Plants

(Page 4 of 4)

February/March 2008
By Barbara Pleasant 
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After three years or so of frequent use, you can cut ragged row cover into pieces to use for smaller jobs, like wrapping individual tomato cages or keeping flea beetles from finding a short row of radishes. Cut into strips, worn row cover makes good plant ties, or you can wrap the strips around tree trunks in need of protection from winter sun or borers. Ripening melons swaddled in row cover scraps are rarely sampled by birds or mice, and young ears of corn covered with row cover bonnets held in place with rubber bands become off limits to the moths whose larvae become corn earworms. Last fall, I went out on a chilly morning and stuffed a scrap of row cover into the entrance of a badly located yellow jacket nest so I could safely harvest my butternuts. It really worked like a charm.

RELATED CONTENT

Row covers work great to protect your crops from a wide variety of pests, including:

  • Cabbageworms
  • Flea beetles
  • Squash bugs
  • Colorado potato beetles
  • Root maggots
  • Leaf miners
  • Deer
  • Rabbits
  • Birds
  • Cucumber beetles
  • Army worms
  • Grasshoppers
  • Squash vine borers

Veteran garden writer Barbara Pleasant has used row covers to add more than three months onto the growing season in her Virginia garden.
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  • Labgirl1 7/24/2009 8:02:04 AM

    I've used old curtain sheers for years. I look for them all the time at resale stores. I put sheers over opened out tomato cages to cover my collards, kale, and other assorted greens. I use them to protect from early frosts in the fall and late frosts in the spring. I cover my blueberry bushes
    to keep the birds from eating all of them. I've tried the commercial row covers but still keep coming back to the curtain sheers.

  • Garden Guru 2/4/2008 12:32:11 PM

    My own experiences with light and medium weight row covers such
    as Reemay, have also been pretty favorable, but not in all cases.
    One clear winner was found in protecting a delectable crop of
    blackberries from pesky birds. Edible greens were fairly well
    protected from ravenous bugs as well. But without question, one
    size doesn't fit all. Sun-loving peppers and tomatoes do much
    better without the intrusion of light-filtering, moisture-retaining
    fabric. Additionally, these fabrics will certainly NOT stop hungry
    deer or clever rabbits from ravaging your crops. As part of an
    integrated solution, row cover works well when treated with a
    natural eco-safe spray such as Liquid Fence Deer & Rabbit
    Repellent – or when used in a fenced-protected garden – but
    absolutely not alone! There is one other VERY important thing for
    readers to remember: this very same "protective" fabric will keep
    beneficial insects OUT, including those ever-loving wonderful
    bees!

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