Making Crop Protection Tunnels for Raised Beds
If you are thinking about building some raised vegetable beds to make you kitchen garden a whole lot easier to manage you might want to consider our revolutionary new raised bed joining brackets.
As you know the team at Quickcrop work night and day in our quest to come up with better solutions for you, our much valued customer. The contraption above is our latest design which builds on the success of our mini polytunnel kits and mixes a raised bed and removable crop protection tunnels. The system uses heavy duty plastic brackets which are not just a method of joining boards to create wooden planters but also a support bracket for inserting plastic tubes.
Once fitted (they simply slot in and out) the tubes can be used to suspend your choice of crop protection material like Enviromesh or bird and butterfly netting. The hoops can also be used to hold fleece or polythene in the Spring or Autumn when you are trying to protect your vegetable beds from colder temperatures.
For example, cabbage white caterpillars (the larval stage of the cabbage white butterfly) can destroy your cabbage family crops incredibly quickly if you don't spot and remove them; I have been away for a couple of days and returned to the horror story above on one of my sprout plants.
The best way to deal with cabbage white caterpillar damage is to prevent them reaching your plants in the first place and this means protecting your crop with Enviromesh insect protection mesh or a larger gauge butterfly netting. Also, more and more chemical pest control products being withdrawn from from the market as regulations tighten (not a bad thing) so it makes sense to future proof your garden with organic pest control in mind.
Raised Garden Beds with Crop Protection Hoops Our new hoop bed is a new raised bed system that features sturdy injection moulded corner pieces to join the boards instead of our traditional wooden corner posts.
The kit also includes hoop support brackets if you wish to add hoops to an existing raised bed, simply screw to the side of your planter as shown and slot in the tubing.
The beauty of this design is the corner brackets are also designed to fit standard 25mm water piping which can be easily slotted in to create a crop protection hoop bed. Water pipe is easily available in large hardware stores (though you may have to buy in bulk) but we also supply by the meter and can ship you any length you require.
The reason we use the new design blue pipe is it holds its shape better when bent making it easier to work with; this is especially handy if your are adding a spine along the back of your mini raised bed polytunnel and need to make straight sections as in the photo. We also supply x-piece joint sections which neatly fit inside the tube for this purpose.
The hoops can be covered with your choice of protection which can be fixed permanently or simply weighed down with stones or bricks as in the main photo. The hoops can be easily moved from bed to bed as you rotate your crops around the garden which gives you an incredibly versatile pest control system.
Our new hoop bed is available in a range of 7 inch and 9 inch high raised bed sizes but the brackets can also be purchased separately if you want to make up your own beds.
Mini Polytunnels for Raised Garden Planters If you'd like to build a removable cover for a raised planter or to be placed on the ground in your garden beds we also supply a kit to build a stand alone cover like the one pictured.
We supply all the parts you need to build a mini polytunnel including the timber, brackets and connectors, tubing and your choice of cover. Kits can be fixed to a raised bed with a hinge set to make a very handy and easy to access bed or fixed to the ground using our peg and eye system.
You can read more about our mini polytunnel kits and watch our video on how to make one by clicking the link.