Hattie the Hen
Deeply Rooted
Hi Steve,
A few years ago I tried the slit fencing materials but it was not so useful to me as the crops could be seen & accessed by my chickens & bugs etc so that was when I first started using fleece.
The fleece fencing works well for me because my raised beds are only 1metre x 1metre or 2metre x 1metre. At the moment I only have 5 of the small ones & 2 of the larger ones but I hope to have a couple more next year.
Using the fleece as fencing was particularly useful with my pea & broad bean plantings in the difficult late Spring we had earlier this year. I sowed both crops directly into their raised beds in early March -- the beds had been covered in old glass windows or rigid-plastic throughout the hard freeze we had from early January to March (our coldest winter for 19 years).
After sowing the seeds I kept the glass/rigid-plastic over the seedlings until they were too tall for the space. I intended just to throw the floating fleece over the tops of the plants but we had such high winds at the time it was hard to keep it in place so I came up with the idea of the canes pushed into the corners of the beds & pegging (using cloths-pegs from the washing line) the fleece round the beds. As the peas grew I put in pea sticks to support them. The walls really helped a lot & they grew very fast & eventually as the weather warmed up & they started flowering I was able to take the walls away. I had my best crop of peas ever & they went on for a long time. They were "Carouby de Marsanne" & were a pure delight as I could use them as mange-tout or eat the slightly older peas raw (my favourite treat. The broad beans responded to the same treatment in much the same way.
I also direct sowed my Runner Beans "Painted Lady" into a third bed in earl April round a teepee stucture & draped this stucture with fleece until the beans were halfway up the canes, by which time the weather had turned very warm. They were very productive & I was harvesting them till last week. I have left some huge old pods on the vines to dry off for seed-saving.
I also grew sweet-corn with the help of the fleece in the early stages but as the summer got very wet (& hardly sunny at all ) that was not so successful.
I also peg fleece over arched supports for salad vegetables & low growing items. It helps a lot against carrot-fly etc. Next year I will use it over my strawberries ( I didn't grow any this year).
When the weather gets very chilly I use up all my old (& partly damaged pieces of fleece to tuck round & over any endangered plant). You can double up the thickness in low temperatures (best used as a short-term measure as the plants will suffer from low light levels).
:rose Hattie :rose
I hope it makes it thru the winter fine....
