wire wicket row cover

I've always wanted to make some wire wickets to support rowcovers, like is shown in various garden catalogs. Since this is the year for row covers, it was time. At the farm supply I got a roll (maybe 200') of # 8 or 9 wire, then I fashioned it into wickets. First I figured that I needed a 4" piece of wire, at 18" from each end I twisted a loop about 1" by using the wire clippers. My rowcover material is 7' wide and I wanted to double the thickness. After putting the wickets in about every 4', hay string is strung down either length, the string is hooked into the loops. There is no need to tie or thread the string in, it should just slide into the loop. Then the two ends of the string are tied together about 12" from the last wicket and staked down at the end like a tent is. Do that at both ends of the row.

The row cover is laid along the wickets and draped down the sides. Then at either end of the row, gather the end of the row cover together, tie it and tie it to the stake that is holding the strings. Pull it quite snug and it will hold the rowcover in pretty good order. You can see I laid a fence rail alongside because we have some wind here. Plus my row is about 24' long.

This worked really well until our young cats came out of hibernation and began terrorizing. They mashed the wickets in just a few days. Thankfully we had some small rebar hoops which I replaced the wickets with. Wire wickets are cheap and pretty easy to set up, if you don't have young cats around !!!

Note on cats. Cats like ours, think row covers are race ways. It's a daily process to re set the hoops and adjust the row cover. The cats can "play" enough in the row cover to expose plants to the elements, so the covers need to be constantly checked. Finally I realized that the nifty little wire wickets weren't going to be enough support, the cats just flattened a few of them. So I put in rebar hoops and put 4" rails on the edges of the row cover. That kept it firm enough and kind of took the fun out of it for the critters.