Tips from Olle Garden Bed: Row Overrides - Protect Your Garden From Frost, Pests, etc

The row cover is not only very suitable for protecting your garden from frost, but also forms an excellent, chemical free barrier, which can eliminate many insects that threaten crops. For some reason, we covered almost everything in the garden at the beginning. Understand different types of fabric row covers and their advantages. The following content also has some reference value for raised garden beds.

Row covers are fabrics that protect your plants from low temperatures, excessive sunlight and pests. They screened out Japanese beetles, potato beetles, cabbage worms, leaf miners, carrot flies and most cane borers. However, they still transmit light to your plant without accumulating heat.

Water passes through it without being absorbed. Commonly known as reemay, it will allow 30% to 90% of the available sunlight to reach the crops below, depending on the thickness. The heavier the fabric, the less light it transmits. If it is reusable, and if it is stored in a dry location where rats cannot nest, it will last for many seasons.

Type of row cover

In order to prevent freezing, please look for heavyweight row covers. They allow less light to enter, but capture heat and raise the temperature under the cover by several degrees, which is usually enough to determine the life and death of young plants. Do not use heavy lids when the weather is warm, or you will risk cooking plants.

Most row covers are made of polypropylene garden fabrics, which can not only protect plants from freezing (as low as 28 degrees Fahrenheit), but also allow light to pass through, absorb heat, prevent insects from entering, and is an excellent windbreak. It also allows rainwater and overhead irrigation to reach plants and soil.

Lightweight lids (sometimes called summer weight fabrics) are the best choice for insect control, allowing 80% to 90% of the light to enter without overheating and blocking rain. However, they are not sufficient to prevent freezing.

Use them early to prevent flea beetles from eating holes in lettuce. They are very suitable for blocking flying insects, such as Japanese beetles, potato worms, bean beetles, grasshoppers, cucumber beetles, pumpkin rattan moth, root maggot flies and cabbage moths.

They are not so effective against slugs, slugs or insects that appear in the soil, so you must pay close attention to whether plants are damaged by them. If you are protecting plants that need pollination to produce fruit, such as cucumbers and pumpkins, be sure to remove the lid after the plants begin to bloom and let pollinators in. By that time, plants are usually big and strong enough to survive insect attacks.

If you have difficulty for birds to eat the newly planted seeds or uproot the seedlings, the canopy is what keeps them away. It can also stop deer, chipmunks and rabbits.

If you are gardening in a windy place, row coverings can protect your plants from strong gusts.

When starting beets and carrots from the seed, it is important to always keep the seedbed moist. This can be difficult to do, especially in dry years. We found that laying row mulch on newly sown beds helps prevent water from evaporating too quickly and prevent soil from crusting. The new seedlings will lift the lid when they germinate.

As the summer solstice approaches, lettuce will enjoy a little shade.

We hang old, torn row covers on the lettuce bed to provide shade and protection for plants from the storm. It also helps keep lettuce clean.

The row cover can be laid on the top of the plant and fixed at the edge with soil, pins, rocks or sandbags. This is called floating because it is not supported at all. As long as you leave enough slack, the lid will be pushed up as the plants grow.

How to support line overwriting

We support most of the covers on the ferrules. Clamp them with clothes clips and press them on the side with stones or bricks. They rarely fly away. Our hoops are free and made of old political symbols. In most states, these signs need to be removed 7 to 10 days after the election, so if the signs on public property still exist after that, it is a fair game! Heavy wire is perfect, you can tidy the roadside by removing signs.

The extensive use of row covers may make our garden look like an explosive laundry, but anything that does not use harmful chemicals and gives plant fighter planes will stop insects is worth doing.