Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

A Recycled Veggie Bed Cover

The Finished Product

Here in Western Sydney, the summer sun gets pretty savage and the veggies, especially the younger seedlings, require protection as they grow. The bed covers I built (you’ll find an article on them here) were designed to cover a large area, but what if you wanted to cover the beds separately, and didn’t have a lot of cash? Well a friend of mine, Vera, has come up with an idea based primarily around recycled materials, and here is what she did -

While she was out and about she noticed an old kiddy pool being thrown out because it was holed. She picked the whole thing up and brought it home, using the liner as a spare wheel cover but taking out the tubing supports for use in the garden.

The tubing supports came in two lengths and she pushed them into the garden with the shorter ones on the western side and the taller ones on the eastern side so that the cover would slope towards the west, reducing the effect of the harsh afternoon sun. She pushed them in at about 2 metre spacings along the bed.

With the supports in place she now set up the shade cloth, which she had hanging around. To reinforce the shade cloth where the attachments were to be wired on she used her sewing machine to sew on some woven cloth reinforcing tape. To make the attachments she cut some pieces of 12mm dowel into roughly 100mm lengths, drilled a hole in one end, and then wired them onto the reinforced section of the shade cloth. The width of the dowel is not critical so long as it fits inside the tubes!

To install the shade cloth it is just a matter of slipping the dowels down inside the support tubes, which can be done quickly and easily. The extra height on the southern side allows you to get in underneath and water the seedlings, remove pests etc.

This is a great design using mostly recycled materials and well worth installing to protect those tender veggies. Another benefit is that they act as protection in the event of a summer hail storm.

The Kiddy Pool

........... and why it was discarded!

Disassembled

Sewing on the reinforcing tape 1

Sewing on the reinforcing tape 2

Drilling the dowel

Inserting the wire 1

Inserting the wire 2

The dowel wired onto the shade cloth

The dowel inserted into the support tube

From the west

From the East

Click Here to check out our YouTube Channel