Thanks for your help in highlighting the various elements I need to protect my plants from. I am just getting into gardening all year round and want to use fleece this winter for the first time, as weather forecasters predict a harsh winter. Can anyone with experience of using fleece advise me if it really works and what thickness I will need for general use? I have seen both 17g and 30g types. Thanks!

Thanks for the information in your article above. I never knew there was so much to planning a garden! I have found a nice corner of my garden which gets plenty of sun and I have just enough space for some beds, which I would like to raise as I am not getting any younger. Does anyone have existing raised beds? If so, what are they made from and how wide are they? Are they easier to use? I would like to build my own but if anybody has bought a kit and can recommend it I would love to know!
Thanks, Paul

Hello Paul. I have raised vegetable beds along a wall and some set apart on their own. They were made from concrete blocks 3 high so that they are at waist height and screeded over. They are an arm's reach deep so I can weed easily.
I grow very successfully broad beans, french beans, peas, courgettes, rhubarb, salad vegetables, spring onions, tomatoes (against a trellis by one of the beds) leeks , shallots. I am trying cucumber this year
Good luck
Sonia

I was interested to here of the fate of your runner beans because my french beans suffered exactly the same damage... and the salsify, celeriac, beetroot and just about everything except parsnips and courgettes. I was desperate!

As my carrots were only damaged when the wind blew my carrot fly protection off we deduced that the Beast would not pass through fleece. At one time my vegetable plot looked like a temporary morgue with white sheeting everywhere. Then I realised that it was not necessary to cover crops, a low fence round them, securely pinned to the ground, would do the trick. I made fences from strips of enviromesh with channels of old sheeting into which I inserted short canes.

My later sowings are thriving, though it remains to be seen if the autumn is mild enough to allow crops to mature. So what does it? a rabbit would easily hop over the fences, and a mouse would chew its way through in no time, so our chief suspect is...

Voles.

I shall need to get some more environmesh for next season.