Plant covers are a simple solution to so many of the problems that plague the garden. They keep insect pests from damaging plant foliage, prevent deer and rabbits from nibbling on leaves, and shield plants from sun and frost. Have you discovered the ease and convenience of these protective structures? They make gardening so much simpler! In this article, I’ll introduce you to a handful of the plant covers I use in my own garden.

Reasons to cover your plants

Outdoor plants are vulnerable to all kinds of potential troubles and covering them with a protective structure is a clever way to keep these troubles away. There are many reasons to employ plant covers in the garden. Here are 10 of the most common ones:

1. Protect newly planted seeds and young seedlings from the mice, voles, and chipmunks who like to dig them up
2. Speed germination of crops that have been direct seeded into the garden
3. Shield transplants and tender annuals from late spring frosts and other weather extremes
4. Shelter tomatoes, peppers, and other warm-weather crops from early fall frosts to extend their harvest
5. Keep birds from eating your berry crop
6. Prevent pests like cabbageworms, Mexican bean beetles, and tomato hornworms from laying eggs on your plants
7. Reduce the amount of damage from a huge number of leaf-eating insects, including squash bugs, cucumber beetles, and Colorado potato beetles
8. Shade cool-weather-loving crops from the summer sun to keep them producing longer
9. Form a barrier to deer who like to browse on plant foliage or rub their antlers on young trees
10. Safeguard veggie plants from marauding groundhogs, rabbits, and squirrels

There are many types of plant covers, with each one protecting plants in a different way. They are made from a range of materials, and many come in different sizes. Some plant covers protect individual plants while others protect multiple plants at the same time. Before I introduce some of my favorite plant covers and tell you how and when to use them, I’d like to quickly share a few surprise bonus benefits of these structures.

Extra benefits of plant covers

• The permanent coverage that high-quality plant covers provide throughout the entire gardening season is far superior to most pesticides and animal repellents that need to be reapplied every few weeks. With a plant cover, for the most part, you set it and forget it!
• Though the cost of some plant covers may seem a bit pricey, almost all of them can be used for many years, not just for a single season. If you do the math, you’ll see that purchasing bottle after bottle of organic pesticide or animal repellent year after year is even more costly. Not to mention the emotional and monetary cost of having to replace destroyed plants.
• Plant covers save you time and the headache of having to remember to go out to the garden and handpick pests or spray something. You can even go on vacation without worrying that you’ll come home to a ravaged garden.
• There’s also potential to save a lot of money at the grocery store. Plant covers that provide frost protection, like floating row cover or a mini greenhouse, can keep you harvesting for weeks beyond your regular growing season. And when used in the spring, they give you a jumpstart on the season, enabling you to harvest more food for a longer period of time.

When to use plant covers

While you might think there’s a special time you should be using these protective structures, there isn’t. Depending on their purpose and your climate, plant covers can be utilized year-round. Use them in early spring, late fall, and winter as a frost covering to shrug off cold snaps. Employ them during the growing season to thwart insect pests. And use them year-round for deer protection.

The only additional piece of advice I want to offer regarding when to use plant covers is to do so before the problems start. Use plant covers as preventative measure; don’t wait until after the pests find your crops or the first frost strikes to take action and start using them.

How to use plant covers

If you condense all the benefits of these structures and the ways in which they are used, you’ll discover there are four primary ways to utilize plant covers.

1. To deter animals and birds
2. To limit damage from insect pests
3. To protect plants from frosts
4. To provide shade during hot weather

The following four sections of this article discuss each of these reasons in turn. You’ll be introduced to some terrific plant covers that accomplish the goal of protecting plants for each specific reason.

Plant covers to deter animals and birds

Whether the culprits are deer, rabbits, or birds, protecting shrubs, perennials, small trees, vegetables, and other plants from these critters is made easy by using sturdy metal covers. In the vegetable garden and flower bed I rely on a small chicken wire coop. You can also DIY a similar structure using PVC hoops and attaching lengths of chicken wire to the hoops.

Small chicken coops or chicken wire row protectors are house-shaped frames covered in heavy-gauge chicken wire. They cover multiple plants at once, and the carrying handles on top make it easy to pick up and move to harvest. The chicken wire row protector is 13 1/2 inches wide, 37 inches long, and 8 inches at its peak – the perfect fit for 6 to 8 lettuce or kale plants (which the bunnies would otherwise devour at my house). The wire lets sunlight, rain, and pollinators through.

For shrubs and other larger plants, I recommend DIYing a tall chicken wire dome to protect them from winter deer browsing. Make it from galvanized chicken wire wrapped around wire supports or even heavy-duty tomato cages. For smaller plants, try a chicken wire cloche. These are perfect for just-transplanted seedlings as well as mature lettuces and herbs.

More chicken wire plant protectors

Chicken wire plant protectors are also excellent for preventing damage to berry plants as well as ensuring you get to eat the berries you grow. They’re sturdier than fabric plant protectors and you can buy them online or at garden centres, or DIY the perfect sized structure for your plants.

For added protection and to secure your chicken wire protectors to the ground, use wire landscape staples around the base of each structure.

Plant covers to protect against insect pests

When the mission is to deter insect pests, there are a few plant covers worth discussing. My favorite (and long-time “righthand man” in the garden) are row covers. This lightweight fabric rests on hoops or directly on plant tops to shield foliage from insects. It comes in various thicknesses, the thinnest of which has great light transmission and the heaviest of which offers the greatest level of protection from cold weather (which we’ll discuss in the next section).

I’ve always used hoops made from PVC pipes to hold up my row cover, as they’re durable, inexpensive, and easy to set up. However, you can also buy mini tunnel kits that come with hoops (choose from different sizes) and connectors to make reliable, effective plant covers. Just top them with row cover, insect netting, or bird netting, depending on your garden goals.

Learn how to prevent broccoli bugs from eating your homegrown harvest:

Insect mesh is another terrific plant cover for defending plants against insect pests. This flexible, fine-mesh screening is much tougher than tulle fabric. It is also less likely to tear than row cover if you live in a very windy location. It’s a good bit heavier than row cover so you’ll definitely need hoops or stakes to hold it up. I’ve had mine for three years now. I simply hose it off and store it at the end of the growing season. It’s perfect for use on cole crops to keep caterpillars away and on carrots to deter the carrot maggot fly, among many other pests.

Protecting plants from frosts

The third purpose of plant covers is to protect plants from frosts. While you could install a small greenhouse or a cold frame (both offer frost protection), the most budget-friendly winter plant covers are made from heavier weights of row cover. Also known as Agfabric, frost blankets, garden fleece, or Reemay, row cover is a spun-bound polypropylene fabric. For frost protection, you’ll want the fabric to rest on hoops or stakes and not on plant tops. Adding straw or another mulch beneath the fabric can further insulate plants, particularly root crops.

Plastic hoop tunnels are yet another plant cover for frost protection. I know many cold-climate gardeners who grow cold-hardy crops such as spinach, mache, and kale under these tunnels through most of the winter. You won’t be able to grow peppers and basil under them, but cold-season crops should do quite nicely nestled beneath.

Shielding sensitive plants from strong sun

The final group of plant covers have the very important mission of protecting our plant friends from the hot summer sun. While many plants thrive in warm weather, a few vegetable crops much prefer cooler weather.

Lettuces and many other leafy greens in particular are notorious for bolting (or going to flower) and turning bitter when the weather gets hot. Extend your harvest of these delicious greens by shading the plants when summer arrives. Shade cloth is the plant cover for this job. When placed over the plants on hoops or by using some other support structure, it lowers the temperature of the plants and soil beneath and can delay bolting by several weeks.

Shade cloth is a terrific plant cover for any plant during unseasonable spells of hot, sunny weather in the early spring, too. It’s particularly useful if you’ve just set out transplants and the weather turns too hot too fast. The transplants can acclimate beneath the shade cloth for a few days before exposing them to full sun.

For further reading about plant protection on this website, please visit the following articles:

• Our online course about mini hoop tunnels
• Low tunnel hoops and how to use them
• Growing winter kale
• Winter shrub covers
• Growing lettuce in winter