Paddy knows we loose lots of tomatoes to Mother Nature and that’s probably to be expected if you’re not keen on using pesticides and chemicals on your veggies, but this year our roma tomatoes weren’t as bountiful and it was clear there weren’t going to be enough to go around…

Our biggest pest is the cabbage moth and the caterpillars that are part of the life-cycle. Most gardeners cats will have seen entire plants decimated by a single crawler over a few days. The caterpillars are hard to spot and remove manually because they are so well camouflaged.

The netting is just big enough to allow bees and wasps through but not cabbage moths. Unlike the expensive hessian cloth the black plastic netting was very cheap and easy to erect.

Judicious use of zip-ties mid-way up and hooking the netting over the top of the bamboo poles means you can easily lift up the skirt of the netting or pull down the top to get to the tomatoes. nom. nom.