Hello, today I'm thinking about pest control for the summer. I'm Liz Zorab and
this is Byther Farm. Last year I created a Brassica cage from
recycled bits of wood and netting over next to the turkey run.
But this year I've got a new cage!
The 1st thing I need to do is to clear any weeds and there are quite a lot of them,
plants that have gone to seed,
and there's quite a lot of those and decide whether I'm going to
leave these row of strawberry plants in here or not, probably not.
And then this space will be ready to have a row of brassicas in, in 2020.
This is not a weed, this is rocket that is going to seed. I have so much rockets
so many seeds I don't feel the need to save the station so I wasn't super keen
on the flavor of this this sort of wild rocket a little bird somewhere singing a
beautiful song that's a Robin that is just feet away
from me
and the local farmer has just taken this moment to decide he's going to cut the
hedges around us but that's absolutely brilliant because he left the hedges all
through the autumn and this first part of the winter to allow the birds and the
wildlife to eat the berries and the nuts that were on those hedgerows who's now
cussing them back just before the birds start building their nests in the hedges
because he doesn't want to disturb them doing that but it does mean it's a bit
noisy so sorry about that anyway today I am going to be putting
together a new high domed fruit cage stroke Brassica tunnel but today I'm
gonna have a look at the cage I'm not going to get it going to set up I got
part of it set up but I'm really excited about having it so I've been sent this
by a gardening naturally and this is very exciting so it's a metal frame that
then has netting over the top of it - to protect either your fruit from the birds
getting at it or in my case to protect the brassicas from getting an awful lot
of caterpillars
put my scissors away or I'll never find them again so always happy to get a big
box because I can use the cardboard so I'll take the sticky tape off it and use
the cardboard as weed suppressant while I was hoping this would all just slide
out so what I've got in here is is some holes of various different links now
this is some netting I'm not going to put the nesting on until well will tell
I'm well into spring and because the winds that come across this site are
just going to cause damage the netting and when there's no plants in there it's
not important unless I am managed to get some plants in quite early on in which
case then and I will there's the all-important instructions
there's some pegs are holding the netting down right I will need the
all-important instructions
these are the fittings remove that out of there
I'll move this so I
so the idea with this is this all slots together and then there are semicircular
pieces that give me an archway over the top I need to go and get those and bring
them over this says their pipe clips so I need to hang on to those and the first
bits of the instruction say make four rectangles side by side sharing the
center poles
I can do that so these ones are the ones that go across the bed and I love these
elastic bands they can be reused more and more places are getting really good
about their packaging and not I'm not putting unnecessary plastic packaging
that can't be used again so one two three four I don't know why I put my
gloves back on when I was gonna have to take them straight off again oh sorry
about the noise so one two three four my measurements aren't very good are they
and then the the joiners are either a
t-shape or a cross shape so I need the t-shaped pieces so there are some like
this which I would guess are the corner pieces and then others like this which
will which will join them maybe I'll go and check all the pieces
so after a few minutes looking I've worked out the connectors these join
this the ones in the Centers and I'll need them some for each side
I thought that it's gonna be really difficult then it just went and it was
fine I probably need is a piece of something
firm to push on rather than pushing against the very soft soil so that's one
so with the ones on the side obviously I need it so that it will will go across
and then join in each direction the other thing I've noticed today is that
the Ducks have worked out they can get out of the vegetable garden and into and
into well anywhere they like a chimney
can I get my gloves on because my hands are cold already
getting a piece of wood to press against
and I also want to be careful not to put the plastic just against it into the
ground it doesn't have to be screwed I'm turning it to just to push it because I
don't have enough strength to push it all the way in on my own
I'm gonna have to ask mr. J to come out and give me a hand actually putting all
connects in because I'm not strong enough just to hold it and push it in
completely a couple of them particularly the end ones I managed to get all the
way into position so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a very rough
mock-up so you can see kind of how it will be
okay I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do the sensible thing it's going to take two of
us when I have my wrists aren't very strong to put this together I can't
press down on the ground because the ground is so soft from all the rain that
we've had that they're just sinking right in won't allow me to push them in
so I'm going to do the sensible thing and we will come back to this on another
day I'm so excited by this and I do feel slightly weak and feeble her not being
able to put the connectors in but they've got to fit in snugly so it
doesn't all fall apart