Protect your garden from frost, insects, and more

Row covers not only protect your garden from frost but also act as a barrier to the best chemicals to avoid many pests that threaten crops. For one reason or another, we first cover everything in our garden. Check out the different types of fabric line covers and their many benefits.

Row covers are the fabric that protects your plants from cold temperatures, high sun, and insect pests. They screen Japanese beetles, potato beetles, cabbage worms, leaf miners, carrot flies, and most flag beetles. Nevertheless, they transmit light to your plants without allowing heat to build up.

Water goes through it and is not absorbed. Often referred to as the same, depending on the thickness, it will allow 30% to 90% of the available sunlight to reach under the crops. Heavy fabric transmits low light. If reusable and stored in a dry place where rats cannot build a nest, it will last for several seasons.

Types of Row covers

For frost protection, see Heavyweight row covers. They allow in low light, but seal the heat and raise the temperature under the lid a few degrees, which is often enough to make a difference between the life and death of delicate plants. Do not use a heavy lid after the weather has warmed up or are at risk of cooking your plants.

Most row covers are garden cloth made of polypropylene, which not only protects plants from frost damage (up to 28 degrees F), but also penetrates light, traps heat, prevents bugs from coming out, and is an excellent wind barrier. This allows rain and overhead irrigation to reach the plants and the soil.

You can find thick fabrics at some garden stores that protect plants from frost up to 24 degrees F. This allows you to isolate strawberries, herbs, perennials, small fruits, and other delicate natural plants throughout the winter.

Lightweight row covers (sometimes called summer white fabric) are ideal for pest control, allowing 80 to 90% light and preventing rain from overheating. However, they are not sufficient for frost protection.

If used early, it will prevent the flea beetles from eating the holes in your lettuce. They are excellent at preventing flying insects such as Japanese beetles, potato beetles, bean beetles, locusts, cucumber beetles, squash flag borer moths, rootworm flies, and cabbage moths.

They are not as effective on snails, mites, or insects that emerge from the soil, so you need to monitor your plants for damage. If you are protecting plants such as cucumbers and pumpkins that need pollination to produce fruit, be sure to remove the covers to allow pollinators inside once the plants begin to bloom. At that time, the plants are usually large and strong enough to withstand insect attacks.

If the birds have trouble feeding you freshly planted seeds or uprooting your seedlings, there is a row cover to keep them in the bay. It can also encourage deer, chipmunks, and rabbits.

If you garden in a windy place, row covers will protect your plants from being flattened by strong winds.

When starting beets and carrots from seed, it is essential to keep the seedbed always moist. This can be difficult to do, especially in a dry year. Covering the top row of newly planted beds helps the moisture to evaporate very quickly and prevents the soil from overflowing. Raise the lid as soon as the growing seedlings germinate.

To give the plants some shade and protection from the wind, we hang old, torn rows on the lettuce beds. It also helps keep the spinach clean.

Row covers can be placed on top of plants and secured around the edges with bundles of soil, needles, rocks, or sand. It is called float because it is not supported in any way. Push the cover-up as the plants grow, until you are sluggish enough.

How to support Row covers

We support most of our cards on wire hoops. They are sewn by cloth and weighed sideways by rocks or bricks and rarely fly away. Our rings are made from old political symbols. In most states, Those signs must be removed 7 to 10 days after the end of the war, and if there are signs on public property after that they are fair game! A heavy-duty wire is perfect and you trim and trim the sidewalks.

You can use wire loops and row covers on raised beds. See photo below