Welcome to our Homestead and Welcome to
our garden we have a lot of our spring
planting already in the ground here in
zone 8B in Texas we still have a few
things to get in the ground like this
Swiss chard so with the warmer
temperatures here in my zone in Texas
come the insects as well and every year
those insects do a number on my little
seedlings so finally this year we've got
row covers that we are putting on and
this acts as a little bit of a frost
blanket and it covers and protects from
those insects
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yeah
so let me show you what we got for our
garden this year and where we got it
from this is a medium weight row cover
it works as a frost blanket but it won't
protect from a freeze so that Dew that's
coming down when it's just hitting 32
degrees it'll fall on this instead of
your sensitive seedlings it's also a 20
shade cloth technically it lets through
80 percent of the light so if you
haven't had a good amount of time to
harden off your seedlings in the spring
this will act as a little bit of a
barrier to give them a little bit more
protection from an intense sun and then
of course for us the big one
protecting from insects and all those
insects all those moths waking up and
wanting to lay eggs everywhere they can
in the spring this is going to protect
them our seedlings from them not to
mention flies like carrot fly too okay
this is nine gauge galvanized steel wire
it's 171 feet long and this is used to
make the hoops this is probably the best
thing that I found to make Hoops for a
low tunnel or a very low row cover you
can cut this pretty easily with a pair
of wire cutters but a pair of bolt
cutters would work the best for this and
then I've got some landscape staples and
I'll show you how we construct the row
cover and what I do with these so I got
all of this stuff at Growers solution
the same place that I got my Greenhouse
at they have almost everything that you
need to for a small farm a small Market
Garden or a big home Garden like this
and that's including the DeWitt weed
barrier that I used in my garden for
years this stuff is great this piece
right here I think is about four years
old and then they also have the drip
irrigation kits that I've shown in a
previous video on how I set everything
up you can click on that video at the
top of the screen and I used that whole
system in my Greenhouse as well so
before I put the Roll Cover on I'm going
to get my seedlings into the ground and
these Swiss chard seedlings are going to
go right next to the ones that I just
transplanted over from the greenhouse
now from that big coil of wire that you
can get from grower solution they tell
you that you can get 32 Hoops that are
five foot three inches long and it's
already you know pre-coiled so they've
got this nice Bend to them which is cool
and they suggest you put them I believe
it's six inches in the ground but for us
we're going to go a little bit deeper
because we have such a soft soil so I
like to cut mine six foot long gives me
a few less Hoops but no big deal what
we're going to do is we're going to
space them between three and five feet
apart you really don't want to go any
longer than that or that row cover is
going to Sag in the middle onto your
plants the row covers come in widths of
six foot which is what I have here 10
foot and 12 foot and that works best
when covering rows that are about 36
inches wide mine are a little bit wider
because I started this Garden without
the understanding of kind of
standardized Market gardening practices
and three foot or 30 inch to three foot
beds are the best width so these are
going to sit a little bit different on
mine but that's no big deal I'm going to
tie these on the end with this Garden
twisty ties and I'll show you how to do
that in a second once I get this cover
over the top these come also in 25 50
and 100 foot lengths I believe this is
going to work out the easiest if you
have a partner to help you with this
because it is fairly light and if
there's a little bit of a breeze it's
going to take off on you
whatever you can use to weigh them down
is good I've got a bunch of old bricks
just sitting around here
now this fabric is a touch bit delicate
but it should last you for several years
if you are careful with it I want to cut
these at least three to four feet past
the end of the bed here and that's going
to give me a little bit to cinch up at
the end so nothing gets underneath
so what I'm going to do at the end here
is just cinch this up like this and then
I'm going to tie it or twisty tie it
with this long Garden twine or twist tie
here my opinion this is a little bit
easier than trying to tie it with a some
sort of twine
but it is your personal preference so
for us I'm just going to go over the
edge of the garden bed here and actually
I don't even need the hammer but that'll
go right down into the ground and really
pull this tight over the sides now on
the side of the row cover you do want to
hold it down because it can blow up and
then your moss and your flies are going
to get in anyway but you can use
whatever you have we've got scrap brick
laying around a lot of people like to
use
t-posts but with t-posts these are kind
of valuable to use around the rest of
the property we've got a few extra so
we're going to put them on the side
and that really does a great job of
holding down a long section of it
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so back here you can see I've already
got the hoop set up we are going to be
doing beans in this bed back here and I
want to protect them like last year we
had a lot of cucumber Beetle and bean
Leaf Beetle get on there and really
start munching on the uh leaves
themselves and I really don't want to
continuously spray all the time what's
nice you can see I've run our irrigation
down directly underneath it which is
great so you can keep them watered even
though the row covers themselves don't
stop the penetration from water overhead
it doesn't give a fine even watering if
you're trying to water from overhead so
you'd have to pull it back and then
water underneath and then pull it back
again but the water or the drip
irrigation underneath works perfect now
I'm also utilizing this for our beds in
our Greenhouse just to keep the Moss and
flies off of our very tender seedlings
like under here some bok choy you can
see I already had a little bit of damage
before I got this cover on
so I just wanted to mention that if we
had good soil Health here on the
homestead we wouldn't really need these
row covers because insects usually do
not attack healthy plants but we are
still building our soil we are still
building the biology into our soil
that's part of the reason why we did the
Johnson sue bioreactor if you haven't
seen that video click at the top of the
screen but once you get that whole
network of biology into your soil and
working with the plant roots of your new
plants that you're planting each year
then you're really not going to have to
worry about insects that much but it's
been a long struggle to get that soil
correct adding more compost adding more
organic matter not disturbing the soil
as much and doing a no-till method that
is all contributing to what we need to
do to get the soil to a super healthy
level so we don't have to worry about
anything like disease and pests but in
the meantime these row covers are going
to help us out a ton so as always I will
leave links to everything that we use in
our garden including these new road
covers in the description below the
video now go click on this series of
videos right here which shows you
exactly how we built that Greenhouse
behind us by ourselves have a beautiful
blessed day we'll see you next time bye
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