Dateline: 14 August 2016
The picture above shows four kale plants that I started under a PVC hoop cloche. The Agribon 19 row cover I had over the cloche kept flea beetles and cabbage worms from getting to the leaves. If I did not cover the kale plants they would have looked like this...
Those sorry-looking kale plants were growing only a few feet away from the lush ones in the prior picture.
So I harvested the leaves off the good kale and dried them for nutritional green powder to use in the winter. Here's a picture of the dried greens going into a canning jar...
After harvesting the leaves, I needed to recover the four plants so they would make more nutrition-rich leaves. The hoop cloche was getting too low for the tall plants, so I decided to buy a Haxnicks Micromesh Lantern Cloche
to see how good of a product it is.
to see how good of a product it is.
Here's a picture of the kale plants after harvesting the leaves and putting the lantern cloche in place...
Two weeks to the day later, here's what the kale looked like in the Haxnicks lantern cloche...
And here's what the kale looked like with the cloche removed...
There were enough leaves there to fill the dehydrator again.
My Excalibur dehydrator has ten trays, but I only use three when drying kale. That's because I really heap it up. A big pile of kale greens crammed into the dehydrator will dry right down like you can see in the third picture above.
Of course, I thoroughly wash the leaves in My Outdoor Sink. And I use a knife to slice out the center stem of each leaf.
I was surprised to see some cabbage worm frass on a few stems. How the cabbage worm butterfly got in there to lay its eggs (and got out afterwards) is something of a mystery. Fortunately, the damage was very minimal and I washed the leaves carefully to make sure I got all the worms (I found three). Here is a picture on one of the little monsters...
After harvesting the kale leaves, I cultivated the soil a bit. Here's a picture of the harvested kale plants before I put the lantern cloche back in place...
I'd like to point out that the stems where the leaves were cut will eventually die back and fall off. In this next picture you can see this more clearly. I have just pulled off a stem from the first cutting. It pretty much fell off. Notice the nice neat scars where the stems from the first cutting were...
So the lantern cloche is back in place. The kale plants are safe again. Here's what it looks like now...
The Haxnicks lantern cloche I used is 30" x 30" and 26" high. It's the standard size. I paid $25.75 on Amazon for it.
The cloche is all assembled in the box. You just take it out and twist the four corner support wires (they all attach at the top) so they pivot out and the cloche opens up.
Unfortunately, figuring out how they turn and open it up was a bit of a challenge for me. I think it might have taken me 10 minutes to get it. Maybe only 8. I probably shouldn't admit that. But when I finally got it right, the thing opened up nicely.
There are loops on each corner of the cloche at the bottom. I use some metal pegs through the loops to hold the structure in place. The sides at the bottom don't rest on the ground as nice as I would like to see. They lift up a little at midspan. But it isn't a big problem.
Thus far, I'm pleased with this unique cloche. The micro mesh lets in light and rain, but it's small enough that the flea beetles can't get through. It looks like a piece of garden equipment that should last for several years. How long it actually lasts remains to be seen.
I'm thinking about how to make my own tall cloches and cover them with a screen material. I need these for cabbages, broccoli, and kale, which are prime targets for flea beetles and the butterfly worms. It's either cover the plants, or use an insecticide, and I'm not an insecticide gardener.
