Floating Row Cover can be a very helpful tool in the garden. It can help to extend your season a bit by sheltering your delicate young plants from a frost and it can also assist in keeping the flying bugs out!
The Problem I was Trying to Solve
One of my garden areas is, to be honest, a real pain in the butt! I cannot keep the bugs from devouring the plants that are in that particular area. That spot is getting one more shot this year with the use of a floating row cover. I just wanted to see what impact it would have in that spot.
Installing floating row cover is a fairly simple project. You just need the row cover, something to hold it up and something to keep it in place.
The bed in question being measured. Installing rebar as a base for the hoops, using a slight angle to the center. It’s a lot of hammering… Having an additional set of hands certainly helps when bending and installing the PVC hoops. The PVC just slides right over the rebar and the tension between the two sides holds it snugly. Floating row cover installed and attached.
Floating Row Cover Installation
The bed in question is in between 2 rows of fruit trees in our ever expanding young orchard. It is about 90 feet long and about 3-4 feet wide. It’s literally one long mound. I ordered a 10′ x 100′ roll of row cover to handle it all in one piece.
Step 1 – Setting the Base
The steps are easy. We had some extra rebar from another project and cut them to about 18″. I went down the line and hammered them in on each side of the bed at about 10′ spacing. I made sure that when I hammered them in, they were angled a little inward toward each other.
Step 2 – Making and Installing the Hoops
I used 1/2″ PVC to make hoops from one side to the other. PVC comes in 10′ lengths so I cut them down to 9′. I needed to be sure that there was extra on both sides to weigh down. With the PVC cut to size, my son and I went through and slid them onto the rebar to hold them in place.
Step 3 – Installing & Attaching the Row Cover
With all of the hoops up, the next step is simply to pull the cover across them and then weigh it down all the way around. You can’t really see through it very well, so in order to check on your plants you have to lift the sides, which can be a nuisance but it’s better than letting every bug in the state munch on your plants!
What next…
Water and air get in without problem so that’s not an issue at all, however, if your plants need bees and such to pollinate them, they won’t be able to get there. You can use a small paint brush and pollinate them by hand however. I’m not sure yet if it is even going to make a dent in my issue, but at least the flying bugs with have to find supper somewhere else.
I’d love to know how others use row cover and if it is something that you do regularly or just here and there. I know some gardeners that don’t go without it and I know some who hate it. …I’m still trying to decide, so we shall see.
Be sure to have a look at some of our other gardening related posts and projects here. And don’t forget to check out A Life on the Farm for the more personal side of our homesteading journey!
