ENCLOSED Vegetable garden

[CmoreROOTS]

Anyone ever enclose their vegetable garden? I live in Florida and we have lots of harmful bugs, insects and animals that get in and eat and destroy our vegetable gardens. Since I am totally NEW to planting vegetables I was wondering why I can not use this type of structure similar to a butterfly house except instead of screen it has 1" hardware cloth at the sides and top so good buggies can fly in, to enclose my raised beds. Also when I set up my raised beds I am planning on six 4' X 4' X 18" raised frames. We will dig out or kill by solarizing the soil, then adding a layer of landscape cloth followed by 1/2 the soil, followed by a layer of hardware cloth then the last of the soil. The purpose of this is to keep any digging and burrowing nasties OUT. I also plan on installing drip and micro spray systems for each of the 6 raised beds.

Anyone who wants to see the type of enclosed structure I am talking about you can see it on my blog http://rankin-file.blogspot.com/ this was one we used to enclose some berry bushes.

Please let me know what you think about all my plans.

[nandmsmom]

Certain things would probably do well in an enclosed type system. It would probably end up being a situation like a green house or having row covers on. The problem would be with anything that needs to be pollinated. Hand pollination only goes so far. There also seems to be a difference in things that get real sun and rain, they just grow better and thus taste better.

[SimplyForties]

I do it to keep deer out. Bees would have no trouble with hardware cloth.

If you scroll down on this post you can see my deer deterrent cages -

http://www.simplyforties.com/2009/06/bad-day-on-farm.html

In my case they are covered in chicken wire. The sides roll up so I can work in the beds and then roll back down to keep the deer out. It's been very effective.

[Sinfonian]

It should work fine for your vegetable garden. More folks don't do it due to the cost.

I agree hand pollination is your friend now, however, blueberries are harder to pollinate. Bees need to visit more than one variety of plant to pollinate either. That's not practical for hand pollination, or at least I wouldn't do it.

Good luck!