Snake Proof Netting

I find that netting my plants is almost essential at some point or another. If its not the Bowerbird family feasting on my brocolli, or the currawongs in the tomatoes, its the chooks scratching up the seedlings, or the cabbage white butterflies reproducing on the cauliflowers.

Thus I have devised a number of structures which support bird netting to (more or less) keep these visitors away from where they are not wanted. I have found bird netting at local hardware stores which is 'woven' and thus elastic and less prone to catching. You can get it 4m wide and in black colour so that it is hardly visible in the garden. Very cheap and last for years.

One problem though - snakes. Fortunately I have only had a few in my garden, but up here in the mountains we regularly get red-bellied-black snakes, copperheads, and the deadly brown snakes. We are very fortunate to have a fantastic snake guy who will come round and collect any that hang around for a while. However, as he has advised on many occasions, garden netting can be a real problem for snakes. They can easily get caught up in netting at ground level which not only can kill them, but makes the job of rescuing them much more difficult and dangerous. Lets face it - they were here long before us and are a vital part of the ecosystem, so for their sake as well as ours we should try to avoid gardening practices which harm the local wildlife.

So, here is my Mk1 snake proof garden bed netting system. It uses plastic gutter-guard (which is used to stop leaves getting into house gutters causing flooding and bush-fire problems) as a low 'wall' around the bed. The snakes can go around or under it without getting caught in it due to its ridgitiy. the regular netting then attaches to it as showin the these photos. The gutter-guard a few dollars for a 10m roll and is an outdoor product so it is UV stabilised and should last a while.

You could also use galvanised steel mesh. Actually, you could even use a low fence made out of woven prunings (see photo) which looks better and is more sustainable.



All comments welcome!