Butterfly or Bird netting advice

[peanut]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about building a walk in cage over my veg beds, I need a piece of netting about 10mx12m. Can anyone recommend somewhere that is ideally cheap and can you also recommend the best size mesh to keep out our dear friend the Cabbage White, I've only used environmesh in the past and have seen a determined butterfly wiggle through stretchy mesh.
Or perhaps you would suggest I get bird netting and use the environmesh inside.

I'm on a very tight budget, even thought about sewing pieces of cheap netting together but I'm not sure that would be practical or cost effective in the longer term.

Thanks all.

[nickdub]

I think you said it all with your "longer term" comment at the end - the main problem with cheap netting is that in my experience it does 2 or 3 seasons only.

I'm usually trying to save money myself but once I knew what size netting I needed I'd look on eBay and similar places, and buy the best quality I could afford - TBH gardening, at least where I do it, with all the various animals eating anything left unprotected is very much a money losing proposition. Yes I do grow fruit which I eat but the cost for stuff like netting to protect it is way more than the produce is worth most years - I do it because I enjoy it and like fruit - the only produce of mine that doesn't apply to are apples, plums etc which don't really cost me anything to grow now the trees are established.

[Stan79]

Builders debris netting. Cheap as chips and mine must be 6 years old!

[Mr Bones]

Posted this pic before but I contacted a local scaffolder who was happy to let me take all the used debris net I wanted. It's costed into a job, gets used once or twice and is then disposed of, (some of the roll ends hadn't been used at all).
Needed to sew up the eyelet holes on pieces that were going to be used for butterflies but it's still going strong since 2014.

[Bren In Pots]

I use debris netting for my brassica cage, to cover strawberries and as a sunscreen on my GH its easy enough to stitch together either by hand or machine.

[nickdub]

The problem with the debris netting approach for me, living as I do out in the middle of nowhere, is that I'd have to make a special journey into a big city somewhere and hunt around to find the building sites where I might be able to cadge some for free. Obviously if I do ever end up in a city somewhere, with a car handy then I will keep my eyes open for free netting, but until then the best I can manage, in terms of keeping the cost down is eBay or similar. :-)

[peanut]

Thanks everyone.
Debris netting isn't really what I want for this particular cage as I want to be able to let pollinators through, plus Nick, I also am in a rural location and very unlikely to come across it as a freebie.

I have found some netting on Ebay which could work if I sew it and another seller is hoping for stocks next week so I shall hang on and see if he comes good.