In this video we're going to discuss five different ways to protect your tender
crops from pests, diseases, inclement weather.
And you know just by giving them a little bit of a helping hand,
especially early on in their life,
you're going to get them off to a healthy start and the result is going to be an
Epic harvest.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener thumb.
And growing a greener thumb involves protecting your sensitive young crops.
We protect them from the cold, protect them from pests and,
if you watch to the end of the video,
protecting them also from too much sun and too much heat.
There's a bonus tip at the end for that. Now before we begin,
I will say that this video is sponsored.
It's sponsored by Gardener's Supply Company who are an employee-owned gardening
products company based on the east coast that I've worked with for years.
So we're using some of their products to showcase the different methods that you
can use and I think you're really going to enjoy some of these clever things
that they've come up with.
But these are all tried and true methods that people have used for decades and
decades. There are certainly ways to DIY it as well. Everyone,
I forgot to mention that if you want 20 years of pest and disease prevention in
the garden, make sure to cultivate the Like button and without further ado,
let's get into the video. Crop protection method number one,
the pop up crop protector.
That is the easiest thing you're ever going to get as far as protecting your
crops. The thing that I like about this is let's say,
like has been the case here even in San Diego,
I know something's going to get absolutely blasted by rain.
If you're in a colder zone, sleet, hail, snow,
and you have some tender seedlings. I have some tender lettuce seedlings here.
These are maybe two weeks old. They still can get a lot of damage from a frost.
They can still get a lot of damage from really heavy rains.
And so if I know that, and I have a small bed,
let's say I have maybe a two by four foot bed,
I can come through with this - compacts pretty small - and then we come in,
boom, boom.
And then the bonus that you can also use this for is you can use it basically to
force spring to come earlier.
So if you have a nice seal over the top of the soil, your temps go up 5,
10 degrees Fahrenheit, your humidity goes up.
So let's say you've direct sown some carrot seeds and carrot seedlings,
once they germinate, they just can't dry out.
Or else they get absolutely destroyed. They will not survive it.
So what you could do is you could throw a little bed of carrots in here,
pop this over the top as soon as you start to see germination or even
beforehand, and now you've protected that soil, you've protected those carrots.
And so you're actually gonna get germination. Really when it comes to carrots,
as soon as you get them past germination, you're good to go.
So something like this, the pop up crop protector,
can be a fantastic way to do it and it's made out of a really sturdy material.
So it's not going to get any tears like you'll see with a lot of these,
I hate to say it, more cheap materials. Crop protection number two is a cloche.
A cloche is an old school method of protecting plants.
This is the Sunny Forcing Cloche from Gardener's Supply.
What I like about this one in particular,
it's heavy duty plastic and it's got a movable vent system.
So you can move, let's say it's really going to be cold,
there's gonna be a lot of rain. Close the vents overnight,
you're going to be completely fine.
The temperatures will be boosted to be protected from that inclement weather and
then when it gets a little sunnier or the rain lights up,
you can boom open it up and now you have ventilation. On top of that
let's say you have it closed, right, and it does rain.
Your plants are still gonna get some water,
so it kind of meters the water out because in each of these four quadrants here,
you actually have a hole at the bottom. So watch this. We'll do that.
I'm dumping a lot of water in and it's dumping a little water at a much slower
pace. And so if it does have a crazy storm, it'll fill up.
Some of it will flow over, some of it will come in,
it'll come in at a nice even pace. Our third option is actually another cloche,
but it is much smaller and the plastic is a little bit lighter duty.
So it's more of an all purpose, general purpose cloche. This one over here,
the one we just looked at is of course a little more heavy duty.
You can see just by giving it a little knock versus this one,
it definitely pushes in a little bit more,
but it comes in a set of six and it's still got the ventilation.
Now the thing that's different is there's two ventilation holes on this one.
There are four on this one and this one has these little water reservoirs that
help a little bit of drainage come through the top.
Now the other thing that I like about this one is again,
you can use it on like let's say a single tender plant like this delicious,
dazzling blue kale here. But, tada,
you have these things called ventilating risers.
So if you wanted to add a little bit more airflow, a little bit more humidity,
what you could do is just pop this in about one third of the way around each of
them, come here, you come here, don't drop it on your plant.
And then you come right here and you just do one of these.
So you can have it floating just slightly above the plant if I adhere this in
there correctly.
So you have airflow coming from both the top and the bottom.
So if you have a plant that you just really want to protect from,
let's say a sensitive pest or just a sensitive time and boost the temperature a
little bit, then you can do that without having the temperatures skyrocket,
humidity skyrocket. And potentially just cooking the plant to death.
Crop protection number three, a long cloche.
This is the Cool Weather Grow Cloche.
The thing I like about this one is not only does it fit a really narrow bed,
so if you have a two by four, two by eight foot bed,
really common style for many gardeners,
but it's extendable and so you can take another one. If I had a really long bed,
like I was mentioning a two by eight for example, I could just move this over,
connect this to this and then I could then put the end pieces on.
And speaking of the end pieces, this is what those ones look like.
So you can get full enclosure and just pop an end on just like this.
So let's cover our beans up right here.
Boom beans are covered and then the back of our kale is also covered over here.
The other thing that is really nice is you do have the ventilation up top,
similar to our medium cloche that we showed you earlier on in the video.
Then let's go ahead and make it rain and you still have nice drainage through
the top. So you do get some flow of water,
even if you're trying to protect it from inclement weather.
Now we're getting into one of my favorite methods,
not only for cool weather protection like we've been talking about,
but also pest protection.
So if you've ever struggled as I have with any of your brassicas, your kales,
your cabbages, your lettuce,
any pest that flies and then lands and lays, eggs,
row covers, Floating Row Covers, they're going to protect you.
I can't get through this. Your bugs can't get through this.
It's the perfect solution.
So the thing you'll need is something to hang it over, right?
So these are the super hoops.
What we'll do is we just take them and you just bend one.
These fit actually really nicely in the raised beds that I personally love.
The Birdies Raised Beds.
So let's go ahead and assemble this and we'll talk about it.
Once you actually have it suspended over the frame,
my little hack because my raised beds have really thin metal walls,
is I just use binder clips.
So you want to get it on there and get it secure because the last thing you want
is this thing blowing all over the place
Our floating Row Cover is set up and let's think now about what we've actually
done. First of all, we've created a physical barrier.
Physical barrier for a flying pest is going to be your number one way of
stopping because if you think about how to prevent pests,
you either have to kill them or you have to stop them from reproducing.
So what we've done here is we've stopped any flying pests from being able to
reproduce underneath the row cover.
Now you still can get a lot of pest problems if there are larva or eggs already
under there. So before you put a floating row cover up,
I really recommend inspect your plants, especially those kales, those cabbages.
Really make sure that there's nothing there already.
Then put your Floating Row Cover over and then you can rest assured that you're
not going to have a whole lot of pest pressure. When I grow cabbages,
especially here,
I get cabbage worms like crazy and I do this every single time and my cabbages
blow up because they don't get attacked early on in their life.
Now another thing you can do here is you can extend your season.
So this is going to help your beds cool down slower in the fall and warm up
quicker in the late winter to early spring.
Because remember you're going to be creating a little bit of a more hot and
human environment under here. And a lot of you might be saying,
okay well that's all fine and good but you might be losing some light.
It still lets about 60% of light through.
So when you're growing something like a shade tolerant green,
we've talked about that in a recent video, then it's still fine. And remember,
I would prefer to use this at the early stages of life when the plant's not
hyper,
hyper hungry for life - there's not tons of leaves on the plant and then get it
off to a good start. Once those temps warm up,
once the pest pressure might start to cool down a little bit or the plant is
healthy enough to combat it, then you go ahead and deconstruct this. All right,
warm weather gardeners I did not forget about you.
I am one myself over here in San Diego, zone 10B. You guessed it.
Our final one, our bonus pick is shade cloth.
Now shade cloth is really interesting. It comes in a lot of different types.
There are a lot of different varieties. So again,
it's the one from Gardener's Supply, it's a 50% shade cloth.
What that means is that 50% of the light is cut out.
Which means that when we drape it over like we will do and we have done with our
frost blanket, we have now protected our sensitive lettuce.
Let's zoom fast forward through spring now we're in the summer.
Now you're going to get crazy bolting on lettuce and a lot of sensitive greens
and even just one day of heat can kind of ruin the flavor and really just mess
with the crop.
And so in this particular case we want to do the opposite of the frost blanket.
Now this will protect from pests as well,
but really the the key thing here is we're cutting some of that really hot sun
in the mid day and we're also protecting from birds and some other pests as
well, while still allowing cool air to flow on through.
So you can still see through it pretty well. But again,
it's cutting half of that sunlight and these guys are getting a nice breeze
underneath still and so you're going to slow down the bolting.
They're going to stay nice and sweet,
not so much bitterness into them and really it's a great way to extend a spring
crop a little bit further into the season. When it comes to crop protection,
it really is about asking yourself one question. And that question is this,
what is the thing that's going to impede the growth of my plants at this moment
in time? So is it too cold? Do I need to warm the zone up a little bit?
Maybe I'll throw the pop up crop protector on.
Just a quick little hit of temperature and humidity boost. Maybe it's too hot.
I'll throw the shade cloth on, protect my tender greens, slower to bolt,
nice and sweet for longer. Maybe I need to spot treat for pests. Just boom,
you're not getting in my cabbage aphids.
I'm throwing the cloche on top and you have no chance of getting in.
So I'm actually really curious. For me, I know it's, it's cabbage worms,
it's aphids and those are the really the top two.
Japanese beetles are actually another, maybe the top three.
So comment down below your arch nemesis pest. But again, so many options.
Many of these you can DIY, but man,
I really do like both the quality and the variety of the different options at
Gardener's Supply Company, which is an employee owned company.
Everyone there loves to garden.
I've worked with them for years and years and years.
So if any of these things caught your eye,
at least go take a look at the products and see if it's something that you might
want to add to the garden this year. But guys, until next time,
the sun is setting. I'm going to enjoy my time here in the garden,
kind of chill out for a little bit and I'll see you in the next video.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.