How To Protect Your Crops This Spring

When you have spent a lot of time and care sowing seeds, and looking after the developing seedlings, it can be very disheartening to have your plants or growing yields eaten by hungry wildlife. Read through this advice to find out how to protect your crops without using any chemical pesticides.

Brassicas, especially broccoli and cabbages, are particularly vulnerable to being munched by caterpillars of the large white and small white butterflies, as well as the cabbage moth. The butterflies will seek out the brassicas growing in your garden to lay their eggs on, and once the caterpillars hatch they will grow fast by quickly devouring your veg plants. As these butterflies are part of your garden ecosystem, using crop protection which doesn’t involve any chemical pesticides allows you to grow organic yields, and it keeps the garden wildlife happy, too. Gardening Naturally’s soft butterfly and bird netting for example, keeps these insects, along with birds, off your veg, and it can be used season after season. This soft, light netting is easily placed directly over crops, frames, cages or hoops.

Birds visiting your garden are a pleasure to watch, but to stop them damaging your prized plants or taking the yields, you can try bird netting. Place this heavy-duty product straight over any veg and fruit that needs protecting. The diamond shaped holes of this netting are also larger than those in the soft butterfly product, which means that bees can make it through them to pollinate the crops you are growing.

If you want to ramp up protection from a huge variety of creatures then try Veggiemesh insect netting. This product protects your crops from butterflies, cabbage root fly, carrot fly, pea moth, leek moth, cutworm, onion fly, leaf miners and various aphid species, as well as birds and rabbits. It can also prevent damage from unfavourable weather. Simply place the Veggiemesh straight over the veg you are growing, or a cage or hoops you have set up. Then bury the edges of the material, secure it into place with the pegs and that’s it, your crop is safe for the season. For plants that you want to be pollinated, such as different fruits, then you will need to keep the mesh raised when the specimens are flowering to allow bees to visit the blooms.

With lots of hungry creatures on your plot, who also want to gain from the crops you are growing, mesh and netting is a convenient and effective way of protecting the precious plants and yields. View the full range of Gardening Naturally products by going to gardening-naturally.com

Share this article