Cloche Gardening throughout the Season

The basic principle of cloche management in the vegetable garden is the use of the cloches over a succession of crops during each season. The gardener should not think of his cloches as a valuable protection which he has bought, say, for his strawberries. Cloches can be kept continuously in use and the very best value will be got out of them by planning their moves from crop to crop at the beginning of each season. The first crop of the season may be protected by cloches for only a matter of two or three months when the glass will be moved to cover a second crop and even a third while the first crop is still in the ground.

Cloches have a tremendous advantage of mobility. Instead of having to bring the crops to the glass to be protected as in the case with greenhouses or cold frames, with cloches the glass is taken to the crop so that it is easy to transfer the production from one crop to another. The same set of cloches is used to cover three, four or even more crops in the same season.

The glass is rarely out of use if a good rotation is worked out at the beginning of the year. Just because cloches are movable, there is no point in carrying them about from one end of the garden to the other. Much time and labour can be saved by planning rotations in such a way that the crops to be protected are close to one another so that the cloches never have to be moved far.

As soon as you become interested in cloche gardening and fascinated by the results, you can try and work out rotations which will give you just the results desired. Remember that cloches are not only used for flowers, salad plants, and vegetables - they can also play their part in growing strawberries and raspberries. The more crops that are introduced into the general scheme the more interesting can the idea of cloche rotation become.