Does anyone NOT net their brassicas?

[Scarlet]

Only if I feel it's really necessary.
Not a great fan of netting since I've found several birds (mostly blackbirds ) entangled. Some dead
Also hedgehogs caught up in it.

Squishing is the best way to go in my mind too.

They don't get caught up in debris netting.
The stuff with square holes is horrible - I would never use that again...I had a young turkey stuck in mine overnight, it took a while to find her and it took some doing to get her out
The pigeons eat everything here. Kale is stripped in a day. I won't be growing fruit next year if I can't construct a walk in fruit cage. I've had no gooseberries or blackcurrants - first year they've had all of those and my raspberries have been hammered.

[veggiechicken]

I plant my veg in with flowers, fruit, anywhere there's a space. The big kale (4/5' tall) survive the pigeons OK but the small ones are eaten as soon as they're planted out.
Like Scarlet, all my soft fruit has been eaten this year apart from the raspberries and strawberries in the debris netted tunnel.
The butterflies don't stand a chance with pigeons around.

[Sweet savory]

I net my cabbages/calabrese as cant get to the allotment to pick over daily. The purple sprouting is already pushing the top of the 2’6”it high cloche so I will have to build a taller covering v soon. Hardly any pest damage on the daubenton kale which is growing strongly and not netted. Maybe it knows we don’t like it much
Ssvy

[weegie]

I haven't netted mine properly yet, though I have the frame for a cage up. I have problems with cats and ?foxes so I made some simple covers for the beds from strips of chicken wire with canes threaded though each side - shown in my post here. As the veg have grown bigger I've moved the wire strips and leant them against the frame - there are gaps but so far they are keeping the pigeons off, while being easy to remove when I hunt twice a day for leaf miner eggs on the beetroot.



I have some netting for later in the year, but these strips are so convenient that I may just make a few more and use them instead. The butterflies have kept away so far.

[Penellype]

Without netting I lose brassicas to cats scratching, blackbirds pulling at the mulch/compost, pigeons eating the tops, caterpillars eating the leaves and root fly infesting the roots. Debris netting or other fine insect mesh keeps all of these off and the problems are reduced to flea beetle and whitefly.

[Marmande]

Thanks for all the replies and sorry for the radio silence over the last few days!

I've been emboldened by your experiences to plant out 4 of my cavolo nero plants, 3 of them without any protection at all and 1 of them with a spare bit of fleece draped over it. We'll see how they do! We do have lots of flying rats (er, I mean pigeons) that sit on the garden fence and get fat on my lovingly-tended crops, so I think they're probably a bigger threat than caterpillars.

The plants that I've put out are about 15 inches high and have 10-12 leaves, so they're not massive, but hopefully big enough to look after themselves for a bit... If not, I've got another 4 that are still in pots, but they're getting a bit too big for their containers so I'm either going to have to plant them out soon or else pot them up - decisions, decisions!

[Gman]

My purple sprouting and “brokali” as well as kohl rabi all got shredded by pigeons and needed netted. However, this year I did Tokyo cross turnips and they have been fine with no netting. May just be a 1-Off fluke, but i’ll Try them again without netting.

[Dynamite]

Not this year - bought a child’s windmill that’s been doing overtime and I do check every day as big problem with pigeons but up to now they are doing really well!

Hi Issy, that’s interesting. Do child windmills work? Assume you use it to scare the cabbage white butterflies away, am I right?

Kind Regards.............Rob