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Stylish glass cloches

F&F reviews two beautiful copper cloches.

One of my rules is that vegetable gardening should be pretty if it’s in your back garden. This is rather easy, to be honest, as there are many pretty vegetables out there. But there are also some smart accessories that can make your plot look pretty as well as serving an important practical role too. Like these glass cloches from Black Country Metal Works. They are small copper and glass bell cloches, and are ever so pretty.

I love the warm glow of the copper and the beautiful Victorian design. These cloches are delicate, but they are not so ridiculously light that they’ll blow away in the winter winds, which is an important balance.

I’ve been sent two to review, and I’ve already put one out over some young chard that I sowed at the start of the autumn in order to bring it on a bit and get luscious leaves.

But there’s another good use for these cloches.

Because they are made of copper, they are a useful weapon in the war on slugs, one I’m desperate to win this year. Slugs are prolific in this garden, far more so than at the allotment or in previous gardens, and I’ve lost good crops to the blighters. But they don’t like copper, and so will reluctantly crawl over these cloches. No one slug defence is perfect, but it’s another way of slowing them up a bit, and I like it.

Also, the open window means that on hot days you can quickly stop your crops from frying inside the cloche, and as they grow bigger, you can let crops like pumpkins start to take a walk while protecting them at their base for a little longer, which is great.

And because these are so tall, they’ll be very useful for starting off one of my favourite plants, which is the sunflower. And that’s a real slug target.

The only thing I wish that these cloches had was a removable top, so that you can let things grow out of them without having to remove them as the season goes on. But it’s not an essential feature. And I’m pleased that I’ve got a chance to make my garden even prettier this year.

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