Urban allotment gardener Michael Rand has a few tricks up his sleeve for making a fruit cage...
|
| Michael Rand: allotment gardener
|
'Thrown-out 'For Sale' sign sticks are ideal, since they're ubiquitous and, at roughly 5cm (2in) square by 2.4m (8ft) long, just the right size for all your upright posts.'
(October 2007) You may remember that last month I wrote about wildlife in the vegetable garden, and considered options for dealing with its depredations – in particular the comparative merits of building a fruit cage, versus triggering a vengeful and gory shooting match to deter pests.
Favouring the former, this month I'd like to consider how best to go about building a fruit cage. You can, of course, go out and buy one. There's a wide range of types available in the gardening catalogues – their size, structure and appearance has a direct correlation with how flush you are feeling at the time of purchase.
However, I'm an allotment gardener, who naturally baulks at handing over real money for any such item so, rather than consider how fat your purse might be, I will assume you're too broke even to own one – which means, basically, finding some recycled (i.e. free!) stuff.
Two basic elements
Any fruit cage consists of two basic components, the frame and covering – stating the obvious for sure, but I need to consider these two components separately.
The most durable fruit cage frame I've encountered was put up by a friend of mine at the Fitzroy Park plots, Mick Smith. Made out of thick, galvanised-steel, central-heating pipes with rugged threaded corner joints, it's a veteran – 40 years old and indestructible! But even here there's a problem, because the whole contraption is so heavy that it's slowly, but surely, sinking into the ground. 'I'll have to jack it back up somehow' Mick informs me. 'At this rate it'll end up underground quicker than I will.'
Wood is good
A lighter solution is called for, and my own preference is for a wooden structure. Thrown-out 'For Sale' sign sticks are ideal, since they're ubiquitous and, at roughly 5cm (2in) square by 2.4m (8ft) long, just the right size for all your upright posts. The bottom 45cm (18in) buried in the ground is sturdy enough to withstand anything, wind-wise, short of a tornado – still leaving 2m (6½ft) poking above soil level. This will save all but the lankiest gardeners from a crick in the neck.
These uprights should go in at (very roughly) 1.8m (6ft) apart. Dig appropriate post holes and, when backfilling, use a spirit level to check each upright is properly vertical. Horizontal top pieces can then be sawn to fit, and attached using salvaged screws, nails or metal brackets. Extra wooden cross-bracing at the top is recommended, to ensure stability and strength. Handier gardeners will no doubt install additional luxuries, such as a door.
Netting options
So much for the frame. As for netting, well, I'll confess to being somewhat optimistic earlier, concerning cost, because while you may find sufficient salvageable netting bits from your allotment rubbish tip, or even get given some by a retiring plotholder, it's more likely that you'll have to buy it. If so, square-pattern butterfly mesh is preferable to the bog-standard, diamond-pattern fruit-cage stuff, being much more rigid and less likely to tangle up any marauding animal. Grass snakes in particular, lacking any reverse gear, are especially prone to such fatal entanglements. Whatever mesh you do find to use, attach it to the frame using a staple gun.
A little ingenuity in the fruit-cage department should soon leave you confident that your precious crops will be free from the ravages of local wildlife, and thus equipped, to adopt the ancient proverb: 'You can happily beat your shotgun into a spade'.
About the author
Michael Rand tends an allotment in North London and is the author of
Close to the Veg: a book of allotment tales, price £10.99, published by Marlin Press.
*For more allotment tales from Michael Rand, and more on growing fruit, see Related Articles at the bottom of this page.
denotes Subscriber-only content | Thursday 21 August 2008 | Help | Glossary 
