building a fruit cage

In Medieval days, men would test their manliness by jousting on horseback.

Today's male has to make do with buying timber from Jewson.

It takes guts to buy wood. Jewson, like all timber and building yards, is staffed by a tough bunch of professionals who know their treated two-by-four from their rough sawn hardwoods and they can spot an ignorant interloper at 100 yards.

Still, you do your best. Armed with a scrappy bit of paper and a glass of Dutch courage I bluffed my way through the timber inquisition and came home armed with lengths of kiln dried treated timber for the new fruit cage.

I've wanted a fruit cage since we first got the allotment last February, and this month's break from weeding and planting has been the first opportunity to get it up.

I've been looking out for old scraps of wood without much success, so made the decision to buy direct from the timber yard.

It set me back around £40 but that's still a lot cheaper than buying a ready made or metal fruit cage. There's plenty of netting in the shed which can go on at a later date.

The cage is based around eight four-by-four inch uprights, each 2.4 metres long (or 8ft long). Around 40cm (18inches) of each upright has gone into the soil in a back-filled hole, leaving a clear 2 metres - tall enough to walk around without catchng the net or banging my head.

I put the posts in the ground in pairs around 1.8 metres apart (6ft in old money) - one on either side of the bed.

A large builder's spirit level is essential here to make sure they are upright and that their tops are at the same height.

I used thinner timber - lengths of four-by-two - for the horizontal top pieces, attaching them with screws through the wood and then adding L-shaped metal plates for extra stability.

Working down the bed, I added the remaining three pairs of uprights and used more four-by-two to connect the frame together.

The bed slopes and so rather than ensure the roof is completely flat, I've allowed it to step down, matching the ground.

The netting will go on with net staples later in the spring once the gooseberries, raspberries and loganberries need protecting from birds.

Some people build a hinged door, but I suspect I'll cope with pulling back some of the netting to get inside.

It's been up a week and hasn't fallen down yet which is a bonus. But how it will cope in a major hurricane is anyone's guess.