Sunday, 10 January 2016

Raised beds II

One of the purposes of my raised beds is to keep the birds off my strawberries (and other seedlings that I might plant).  For which is needed netting.   My chosen system is to stretch it over hoops pushed into the soil.

You can get plastic tubing designed for use as this kind of hoop, for €1.50 per tube.  They are 2m20 long, giving 10cm to stick in the ground, and 2 metres to stretch the netting over.  This fits perfectly with my carefully planned 1m50 wide raised bed.   I decided to push some wooden dowel spikes into the ends of the tubes, to help them stick into the ground.


The dowels fit perfectly, and I anchored them in place with some waterproof glue and a small screw that will also act as a hook for the netting.

Here are the hoops and netting in place, although the netting is hard to see in this photo.  HA! Blackbirds!!  Sort that out!   Actually I have left some strawberries outside of the netting for them.  I rather like having birds in the garden.


As a final tweek, I might get some metal hooks to pin the netting down at the edges between the hoops.
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3 comments:

  1. James Higham10 January 2016 at 02:44

    Might get the hooks? Think they're essential, no?

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  2. Mark In Mayenne10 January 2016 at 02:56

    At the moment the screws/hooks on the loops are holding the netting reasonably firmly against the soil. To get under the net the birds would have to dig a bit, and I'm not sure how capable of this they would be. In any case, I think I'll go for the pegs to hold the netting down, since they're cheap and effective.

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  3. Helen Devries10 January 2016 at 09:20

    I don't think I can get these here but I'll show this to Danilo and see what he can make for me.
    Thank you.

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