Learn How to Use DIY Row Covers in Your Garden
There are some plants that are quite hardy and don’t mind a bit of frost. Others need to be covered to survive once it gets cold. One of the easiest and least expensive ways to protect your plants from frost is to cover your garden plants with row covers. See my photos on using row covers to extend the harvest!
Many leafy greens and root crops are frost tolerant into temperatures as low as the 20s. I generally cover my lettuce, spinach and kale and continue to harvest them—sometimes as late as Christmas. If you live further south, you might be able to keep these plants going all winter long with proper protection. On sunny days, row covers also trap heat to encourage more growth.
Row covers are cheaper and lighter than cold frames, and they can easily be moved to where they’re needed to provide protection for several weeks.
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Covering Plants With Row Covers
Row covers consist of transparent, lightweight, protective coverings in the shape of small tunnels. Lots of crops will carry on a while longer if they’re just given a little warmth and shelter—such as summer salads, spinach, greens, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and green beans. And by using row covers, those late-season stragglers can keep producing for a two or three more weeks in the fall.
Look for spunbond frost blankets or row covers from a garden supply store. Most are made from polypropylene fabric, then held up with metal or PVC hoops. The covers need to be transparent and clean to let lots of light in, given low-light levels at this time of year. You could also use fabric row covers that do let in water, but they will not give as much protection or warmth as other covers.
Also, you need to be able to open or roll back for watering since rain won’t reach the plants. It’s important that covers can be pinned down so that they don’t blow away or tear. By anchoring the sides of fabric to the soil, you are trapping air to create an insulating space. Because they’re so plentiful where I live, I use rocks to weigh down the sides of the row cover, but bricks are another option.
Row Cover Size
The row covers need to be wide and tall enough for your crops so they don’t touch the sides when fully grown so this requires some kind of support. I have metal hoops for the spinach and lettuce. If you’re building hoops from PVC, I’d space hoops about two feet apart; you will need a hacksaw to cut the pipe. To hold up the PVC supports, you can hammer in rebar stakes. Ensure the stakes are about 5 to 6 inches out of the ground, and make sure they have a smaller diameter than the PVC pipe so that the pipe can slip over them for easy installation and removal.
My kale was growing much too high for my own metal hoops. Luckily, it was up against a fence, so I decided to be creative in building their support. I took some bamboo poles and inserted them in the ground in front of the kale. Then I placed another bamboo across the middle of the front to keep the plants away from the front of the plastic.
Then I took some small hoops and tied them to the top of the bamboo poles.
The other side of the hoop was clipped to the fence using clothespins and I tied them to the fence (snow can be quite heavy).
I draped my row cover over the whole structure, pinned in places and grounded with rocks.
Be sure to pick out all the fallen leaves!
I did the same with the spinach.
You really do need to use some heavy rocks or the wind will just blow the cover off. I’m planning on having a nice, big salad for my dinner party on Saturday. The lettuce does need to be thinned and I’ll toss it with a bit of kale and spinach. Yum!
Handy Video Demonstrations
See how to make a row cover tunnel.
See more about using cold frames, row covers, hoop houses, and other ideas.
Celeste Longacre
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Hi Celeste Longacre,
From this valuable description I am getting huge interest on gardening. Pictures are so much helpful to know the actual use of tomato cages and their advantages. Every beginners should read this details. Thanks a lot for sharing this with us.
Mistakes are instructive. One lesson I've learned about extending the growing season is to plant seeds that are not dependent on pollinators, and another is to not use tomato cages as props for plastic sheets unless one is prepared to go out after each rainfall and empty the pools of water that form in the top of each cage.
Next year we plan to run a line between opposite fence poles and drape the plastic over that so it hangs like a tent.
Not only will it not collect rain, if we do it correctly I will be able to lift the flap and walk right in.
Thanks, Alice, for your kind comments! Good luck with your gardening. It does take some effort, but it is well worth it.
Sorry my post appears as its own comment and not a reply to yours, Celeste.
I came to this comment via an e-mailed link, clicked "reply," composed a response in the box provided under my user name, and clcked "send." Even though the web site recognized me, I had to log on again before it would acept my reply, and then it seemed to think I was replying to your blog entry.
I'm not sure why this keeps happenng -- the same thing happened when I posted my original comment. Kind of annoying!
If you continue to have problem with posting replies to comments please contact almanacsupport@yankeepub.com. Thank you.
No tomatoes, just the cages. :-)
I soaked the spinach seeds for 24 hours before planting them, and I turned on the soaker hose for that row every morning for a week. :-( Perhaps they weren't as fresh as I thought. Next year I'll get them from Johnny's.
Yes, I finally figured out that my sugar snap peas might be blooming but without pollinators they won't do much else. Guess I should brush a feather back & forth across them, eh?
We're experimenting this year using plastic over tomato cages placed at regular intervals down one row. We used the cages as we've never done this sort of thing before and didn't want to spend money on hoops we might never use again.
Unfortunately none of the spinach I planted in August germinated -- zero, zip, nada -- and I was too annoyed and time-challenged to try again in September, so all that's covered is a half row of sugar snap peas and a few bush beans.
The only trick so far is keeping the plastic from sagging into the top of the tomato cages when it rains. We are't harvesting much -- perhaps we shouldn't have tried peas and beans!
Hi JBL55,
Sorry to hear about your spinach. August can be terribly hot and dry. Did you keep the top 1/2 inch of soil moist? It can be quite a challenge to do so. Your tomatoes should be okay for a while. Also, peas and beans, once they flower, they need the bees to come and pollinate them. If you have small beans and pea pods, they should grow. Good luck!
