Fruit cage netting

[Shirley Sherriffs]

Morning everyone.

My other half is very kindly building me a large fruit cage to encompass all my fruit. Its going to need a fair bit of netting and I wonder if anyone with a bit more knowledge of fruit growing than me could advise the best place to get netting (of the dozens of sites on the net) no pun intended. There also seems to be a bit of a debate regarding the hole size.

I'm growing rasps, strawbs. goosies, blackcurrants, blueberries, recurrants .

All advice very welcome.

Shirls

[tinks]

netting

morning

i got my netting from my local pound shop

[Sanjo]

Hello Shirley and welcome to the vine.
Check out this company, not to purchase unless you have oodles of money, but they have some really good ideas regarding cages and you can base your finished article on these. The company is called Two Wests & Elliott if the link doesn't work.
Two Wests - Please enable your cookies
For my own fruit/veg cage we used the gardman plastic covered metal posts from B & Q 8' high. These go in each corner with supporting ones across the top as well as diagonal into the ground. They are fixed together with jubilee clips, one inside the other to give me the right profile for holding the pole.
This was covered with black plastic POND netting from Wilkinsons which is pretty strong and was about £5 a pack. I attached the netting with removable ties.
This netting withstood the weight of this year's snow, although the whole structure bent slightly because of the volume.
This would have been avoided if I had done what I originally intended to do, which was swap the top netting for bigger holed pigeon netting. Then the snow would have fallen through.
I originally intended this cage to protect my broccoli etc and to a great extent it did (unless I was just very lucky as I only had a few caterpillars) but realistically the holes are a little too large, although the cabbage white struggles to get in.
I asked for it to be made tall enough for me to go into to pick the veg and that worked fine. I do not have a proper door. The netting is well overlapped on one side and has a length of cane threaded through the netting so that I can push the netting back into the soil when I am in or out.
As the cage is not a permanent fixture we are going to move it across to my other bed so that it will cover this year's cabbages etc.
I have just re-read this post and I hope it makes sense to you!!!!! Sanjo

[lottie dolly]

hi shirley,i would voutch for wilko pond netting as well,it's black and very strong,have a look on their web site,see if it shows any size,is good value,other people on the lotties use it,and if i get around to building one,it's what i will use.

[Rossa]

We're netting one half of our allotment and getting the heavy duty 7mm netting from the Harrods Horticultural website. Stops everything including cabbage whites (netting our brassicas etc.) from laying their eggs. It's 4m x 25m for £45. Expensive but we've got a big potential pigeon problem as there's a loft nearby and wild ones, so hoping the investment pays off.