[attia of the julii]

Planning what I want (and what I can justify costwise) for my newly aquired allotment.  Fruit cages are Sooooooo expensive and I' ve seen many 'interesting' alternative builds. From Old large tent frames and scaffold poles for frames. (Bit of the heavy side for a mere woman to lift I think) anyone got more ideas or a pointer to a strong but not OTT price buy?

[DD.]

Moving this to the 'Design & Construction' forum for the experts in there to see. They may not pop up to the 'Welcome' forum!

[Lee1978]

Hi attia of the julii and welcome, I have seen greenhouses without the glass used for this purpose with good effect on our site. You could maybe pick one up from your local freecycle group

[flatcap]

hi aotj, heres one we built with scrap wood and lats cost about £20
for the netting from wilkinsons

[Gwiz]

how'szabout one of those el-cheapo garden gazebo thingys from Argo*, throw away the covering and just use the frame.
CAT no: 650/2210   £13
tape the joiners up with a couple of rolls of self amalgamating tape to keep the water out and to protect  the plastic (in case it's not uv stabilised), and use wire or bambo canes to provide any extra support you need. Then it's just a matter of getting some netting. (pond cover stuff, maybe)
 

[willowman]

As I only wanted to cover 3 bushes, and wasn't bothered about height, I bought a pack of 25 tennis balls from tesco Direct (£5), punched holes in them in the right places with a stanley knife(very carefully)and used these as connectors for a bamboo cane frame. Not fantastically strong but good enough to hold some netting over the bushes, and considerably cheaper than the metal connectors in the catalogues. If you can't visualise what I'm talking about then post a reply and I'll try to explain better, or post a photo.
PS Also punched 1 slit in some and used two canes per ball to make an apex tent to put netting over my peas.

[peterjf]

hi there , if you go to a local scaffolding company and ask them for any used safety netting im sure they will sell you it very cheap ,

i bought 100 metres of 6ft high safety netting and the company charged me £ 25 , i made 3 fruit cages 15 ft by 7 ft

then split the rest down the middle and i made enough 3 ft high wind breakers to protect all my pricked out seedlings , to harden them off

[muntjac]

as ur in aberdeen get down the docks for old trawl netting ..

[Porffor]

What ingenious idea's you all have!

I bought fruit netting for the top of my chooks run in Homebase, black type (keeps it's shape well) was £1.40 a metre.. guy was a chook keeper and gave me a lot 'on top' of each metre, and then only charged me for one metre! well who was i to argue!?