Grow Your Own Magazine

A cheap method of making brassica collars to keep cabbage root fly at bay is to cut up cheap doormats available from pound shops & supermarkets etc. for £1-£2 into squares, cut a slit into the middle & either a small circle or circle of slits in the centre to allow it to fit around the stem. I've also used old car floor mats for this purpose & you can pick up sample squares of carpet from carpet shops for 50p-£1 sometimes. Works out cheaper than buying ready-made collars.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

Find an independent carpet fitter / supplier....ones based on an industrial estate often have a skip outside they dump offcuts in.....yours for free!

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Geordie

Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure

what are the collars for ?????

Supagranz, the collars are to stop your brassicas being attacked by cabbage root fly larvae which destroy the roots. The cabbage root flies lay their eggs on the surface of the soil around the base of the plant & these hatch & burrow into the ground to eat the cabbage roots. If you put a collar around the base of your cabbage the fly lays it's eggs on this & the eggs dry out as they are exposed to the sun & air & cannot burrow into the soil if they do hatch.The collars need to be about 4 ins square & made of a material which won't disintegrate in the rain but will allow some water through to the plant roots & will dry out fairly quickly so that the eggs dehydrate on them.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

Would three or four sheets of newspaper work SueA?

I think you'd need to keep replacing them every time it rained heavy or you watered the plants, but you could always give it a try Squirrel.

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

Thanks SueA for that.....its a wonder we manage to grow anything with all these pests about

Hi Squirrel, i always use cardboard and it seems to do the trick.

Thanks bramble will try that. Have lost another three brocolli plants to something that has chewed them off below the soil level! Don't they know that I need to eat too!

Carpet underlay is easier to work with and rots down, more or less, during the next winter after use. You can usualy scrounge it for free from carpet fitters and people changing carpets

Oh yes I forgot! rhubarb leaves just below ground is another old idea that I am assured works

I agree it's easy to get a hold of Fred, but from what I've heard it's usually made of urethane or polyurethane foam, which is toxic when it breaks down. Admittedly it's not something that will kill you straight off, but it might well be one of those "time bomb in the soil" type scenarios, same as synthetic carpetting. Personally, I use old pieces of mulch matting - old pieces of landscaping fabric that are too old to suppress weeds effectively usually still have usable pieces of the right size, pegged down they do a treat.