Top Seedling Tips

[RuthC]

We're interested in hearing about your great ideas for protecting young seedlings in outdoor beds. Do you have any make-do-and-mend cloche inventions up your sleeve? Or simply recycle household objects as guards on the plot? If so, we'd love to hear from you. The more unconventional, the better!

A selection of your responses will be edited and published in the April issue's Allotment Notice Board.

[pdblake]

I generally use plastic bottles with the bottoms cut off, but I've also got an old shower door that fits over one of my raised beds and acts like a giant cloche.

I also use raised chicken wire to stop cats from digging seedlings up.

[vicky]

Upside-down wire baskets from old hanging baskets are good placed over plants to protect from vandalising chickens/children.

[winstonwobble]

I have the windscreen's out of waggons placed on top of wooden boards they are nice and thick not as flimmsy as normal glass

[Glutton4...]

I've put spare building site (Heras type) fence panels over the top of my raised beds to keep the rabbits off my overwintering Onions and Garlic! (They're too expensive to buy especially for this job, but were handy at the time!)

[Snadger]

I have two cold frames, one with a sloping front the other is just basically a small raised bed.
Each are about a metre square and made from breeze blocks. They were made to suit two window frames I had lying around which fit over the top.
I also have two wire mesh panels that fit them.

The flat one is a permanent brassica seedbed that gets a soil change each year. Various brassica seeds are started in rows only 4 inches apart with the glass cover on. Once germinated the glass is replaced with the mesh and they stay in the seedbed until planting out time.
The other coldframe is used for seed propagation also, with the glass on. As the plants grow they are moved towards the back where there is more height for growth and some more seeds are sown in seed trays at the front.
When everything has germinated, off comes the glass and on goes the mesh!

[snakeshack]

I like to use plastic water cooler bottles for larger seedlings,if you cut off the bottoms about 2 ins up the give good pot trays as a bonus.
for whole raised beds I use hoops cut out of blue plastic water pipe covered over with a heavy duty polythene dust sheet or fleece,cheap net curtain material is good too.

[nerdgas]

I like to use plastic water cooler bottles for larger seedlings,if you cut off the bottoms about 2 ins up the give good pot trays as a bonus.
for whole raised beds I use hoops cut out of blue plastic water pipe covered over with a heavy duty polythene dust sheet or fleece,cheap net curtain material is good too.

Where do you pick up the old cooler bottles from?

[Nicos]

We use sandcastle flags and little plastic windmills to scare away birds and bunnies- and (so far) deer.They don't seem to work with slugs though- they are clearly braver than I originally presumed!!!
Young seedlings stay near the house until the last frost day has passed.

[chuffa]

Old video tape twisted and stretch over the beds. The flashing of the tape and the noise made by the wind keeps birds at bay. Also i have started to collect the old coffee residue from Waitrose and Tesco, they seem happy to get rid of them. They are great for improving the soil and help keep slugs at bay as they dont like them.

[Comfreyfan]

We bent wire coat hangers into hoops and push them in the ground about 18" - 2' apart, spread a long piece of polythene over the top, push another hoop on top of the others so it traps the polythene and pegs down the sides, tie off the ends with bulldog clips - excellent mini poly tunnel for my early peas. It all slides easily up and over the hoops for good weather days, watering and weeding and back down again for cold nights.

[Glutton4...]

I have the frames from two old camping wardrobes which place over my beds. Then I cover them with either mesh or plastic for plant protection as required.

[snakeshack]

Where do you pick up the old cooler bottles from?

I steal them from work!

[Storming Norman]

I also use some water bottle coolers - they are just the right size and strength to cope with fox damage. One day when delivering I asked the supplier if he had any spare and I was told they were getting rid of old and damaged ones so were happy to give me four with the promise of more. Cutting the bottoms off though is not at all easy - they are very thick plastic.

I also lay pea sticks flat on the ground between rows of seedlings to make it difficult for foxes to dig big holes in the fine soil, and disturb the seedlings. This idea also works to stop them digging up potatoes once you have cut the haulms down but have left them to store in the soil.

[nerdgas]

I've found a company local to Bristol that will sell slightly damaged bottles to me at 50p a go.

If anyone local to Bristol wants the detail send me a PM.