Carrot root fly

A friend of mine is having problems finding a suitable netting for covering carrots to keep root fly away.
He's used fleece in the past but finds it a bit fragile and get torn easily.

I think he has made some frames and would like some kind of very fine netting to fix over them.

Any ideas would be welcome.

 

Pete, this company are pretty good. I bought my 3m wide insect net from them.
http://www.knowlenets.co.uk/garden/garden_netting.htm

BUT! Two years ago Lidl were selling 'cloches' which included hoops, a transparent plastic cover and a fleecy type cover at a very cheap price. I bought two. The hoops were not great so second year of use I reinforced them by running thick fence wire through them. The fleece is fine and has lasted me two seasons so far. Might be worth your friend keeping a lookout on the Lidl website in the spring.

 

I could be wrong, but do you really need to cover the carrots? I thought carrot root fly was a low flyer, and therefore a perimeter fence of a couple of feet should suffice.

I could well be getting confused with some other miniscule critter of course

 

Pete, You need Enviro Mesh. Keeps the carrot root fly away and they grow quicker aswell. I use hoops of blue water pipe pushed into the ground to support it.

http://www.gardening-naturally.com/acatalog/Enviromesh.html

 

I plant marigolds amongst my rows and Broad beans on both sides and have never had a problem...

 

Once upon a long time ago we had a coal fire and when I swept the chimney I saved the soot. When sowing carrots I'd mix a little in with the compost that I put into each sowing hole and would sprinkle a little trail of soot up each side of the rows. The theory was that the smell of the soot masked the smell of carrot. Seemed to work as I very seldom had any fly attacks.

I also used to soak a hessian sack full of soot in a barrel of water and use the liquid, diluted, as a high nitrogen feed on the veg plot.

 

You are correct, but I find it very much easier to stretch mesh over hoops than to errect two walls of it.

 

Bob brought some scaffold netting off ebay last year I think it was about £24 or so all in, I know even now and again their are slightly larger holes in the netting but nothing a quick hand stitch can't sort out.

As we have a nice large plot we intend to try various methods to keep these naughty critters at bay; companion planting, raised beds, netting, fleece and what ever else that might work.

Needless to say what ever works best for us we will inform you all.Hel.xxx.

 

I'm sorry everyone I lost track of this thread.

But thanks for all your ideas, I shall pass them on.

 

That's great stuff and I use it as shading for the greenhouse, it lasts forever and it works a treat. The only thing I'd question about using it as an insect barrier is the light reduction compared with the finer threaded white meshes as the reduction in light/heat is quite substantial.

 

I was always told to grow onions with carrots. The mixture of scents is supposed to confuse the onion fly and the carrot fly! Seems to work.

 

There is a very good way of deterring the Carrot Root Fly, it's been used for donkeys years but seems to have been forgotten by today's "enlightened" growers.

Get a piece of cloth, soak it with paraffin and drag it over the tops. It won't hurt the carrots and the fly won't go near it.

 

I think I can recollect something similar about using mothballs
Doubt if you can buy them these days. The EU's probably banned them!