Protect Your Plants with a Raised Bed and Row Cover

Unwanted garden visitors can be a constant struggle in a gardener’s growing endeavors, posing a threat to fruit, leaves, or even a whole harvest. You can build this simple 3-by-8-foot raised bed and hinged cover to help keep damaging pests away from susceptible vegetable crops that don’t require pollination. This cover is mainly intended to be a floating row cover top, but bird netting is another option in place of row cover to protect lettuce plantings from a variety of nibbling critters.

Use this bed on a three-year crop rotation plan by growing cabbage family crops one year (to keep away aphids, cabbage loopers, cabbageworms, and diamondback moth larvae), beet