What is Garden Fleece and What are Its Main Uses?
Just like the fleece of our jackets keeps us warm and cosy in winters, the garden fleece offers the same warmth and comfortable conditions to your crops. Also known as horticultural fleece, garden fleece is a type of lightweight garden netting that protects the crops against harsh weather conditions like cold and frost as well as other disturbing elements like pests. Garden fleece comes in the form of a sheet of fabric that can be easily arranged to cover over the plants. It’s usually made from polypropylene or polyester.
Using garden fleece is much preferable to using plastic sheets for plant covering. Plastic sheets tend to weigh more, which makes them cumbersome to carry and manoeuvre. Plus in the daytime they may get overheated in the sunlight, while in the night time they may fail to provide enough heating and warmth to the plants. On the contrary, garden fleece is thinner and lighter in weight which means that you can easily move it around your garden. Also the fabric has natural softness and warmth to provide to the crops and plants. If you’ve been looking for a good garden netting for your crops, then garden fleece is just what you need.
The weight of the fabric of garden fleece varies, the heavier the fabric is the more protection it will offer against the frost. You can lay the fleece directly over your row of plants and create a safe and conducive environment for your plants to grow underneath it. Since the fleece is lightweight, you will need to anchor it down strongly to prevent it from getting blown away in windy weather. Just cut out the fleece in the required shape and size, lay it over the plants, fruit, vegetables or crops and secure the edges down firmly into the ground. You can use bricks or rocks to secure the fleece.
Garden fleeces are a great help in letting the plants survive and thrive in cold, frosty weather conditions. Whether the frosty weather continues into the early spring or arrives earlier than usual in autumn, using a garden fleece will keep your garden protected. If your garden has sensitive plants, then you can use the garden fleece for them throughout the winter until the gentle warmth of spring season arrives.
Even though, garden fleeces are a popular form of garden netting for frost protection they can serve other purposes as well. Plants tend to grow well and more quickly when the temperature around them is slightly warmer, garden fleece helps in warming up of the temperature. It allows healthy amount of light and wind penetration to the plants and deters water evaporation. Additionally, fleece also protects the plants against the attacks of destructive pests and insects. In fact, despite of not being very strong and heavy, garden fleece can still protect your crops against attacks by small birds.
Garden fleece is one of the most important equipments to have to support your gardening efforts.