Make Your Own Row Covers Gardening

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Time to put up or shut up.  Time to protect your crops or give them up to old man winter.

Luckily for us, there is a cheap easy, and effective way of doing this. Floating Row Cover Home Depot.

A row cover is a simple device.  It’s a way of replicating greenhouse effectiveness in a small and acute manner. It consists of a few simple parts. I’ll tell you how to make them or get them cheap. So to get the best results with your vegetable garden we recommended you utilize vegetable garden Covers Row to protect them from different climatic alias

1. Structure –

You need something to hold the thing together and keep it in shape. There are a variety of materials you could use. you can build a wooden frame from pallet wood or leftover lumber. That’s the cheapest route. The next cheapest is buying some water piping from Lowes or Home Depot.

DO NOT BUY PVC!  I’ll talk about PVC in future posts. I could tell you horror stories or I could just name-drop: Joel Salatin told me during an interview that he’d never rely on PVC for structures again! What you want for the tubing is in the plumbing section but it’s smaller and more flexible than PVC. It will not break as easily.

The most expensive method would be using rebar. A rebar is a steel rod with knurled areas. It’s used to make concrete stronger. If you can find a way to bend it you can make hoops and use them. With the pipe or rebar, you can simply push the ends into the ground. Push them as deep as you can or they can come loose and your structure can collapse.

2. Plastic –

Luckily for me, we had extra plastic from a trip to Lowes. We used it for a cheap drop cloth. You can pick up a roll of clear plastic from Lowes for about 10 bucks max. This is the cheapest I’ve found. The thicker the better but thin plastic will work.

3. Clips –

You will need to secure the plastic to the ground and close it up. I use old welding wire spool funnels (not welding wire!) that I cut into shape. I salvaged these from work. Clothes hangers work but aren’t perfect.  Just cut them long and curve the ends so they stay.

How to Make Row Covers

Form your hoops and stick them into the ground. I have a row planted already (the seed should be sprouted and growing well or you might not get good growth). I just stick the hoop ends in on either side of the row and space them about 2-3 feet apart. I put as many as I need. Then I roll the plastic over the hoops and make the sides even.

Then I secure the sides. You can use clips or you can lay long lumber scraps to hold the sides down. The ends should be pulled together so that you can hold the end in one hand. Then clip that tail to the ground. Go around and make sure there are no air gaps. Place bricks, lumber, rocks, or other weights to keep the plastic down with plant covers.

That’s it. Check it often but open it only when necessary. Water stays pretty well but if you water it you can just let it run under the plastic and in.

Frost Protection In The Garden