Cheap £4 hack will keep pests from your flowers and vegetables for the whole summer - Mirror Online

A genius hack will keep pests away from your flowers and vegetables for the same price as a large coffee.

As temperatures heat up this summer, TikTok has exploded with gardening hacks to help keep your outside space looking lush and beautiful. One brilliant hack doing the rounds involves using a mesh bag as a barrier against pests trying to get at your beloved homegrown vegetables.

The mesh bags are similar to the drawstring sheer bags often gifted out for weddings and party favours and you may even have some lying around at home. This is an especially useful hack for people growing fruit and vegetables this summer. To take advantage of this trend, start by placing the bags over your fruit and vegetable plants - anything from strawberries to peppers - as they grow. The holes in the bags are too small for the larger pests, like slugs and snails, to get through. There are other uses for the bags - which are super cheap at just 50 for £3.99. They can be used to collect seeds from spent flowers by enclosing the dying flower in the bag. This is a sure-fire way of not wasting any of the seeds by letting them drop to the ground.

The mesh bag coverage technique has received the seal of approval from gardening experts, who say it's not that dissimilar to using plant netting. "Plant protection netting is usually used to protect crops like fruits and plants from pests, which include birds, insects, mice, squirrels, rabbits and domestic pets," says Petar Ivanov, gardening and plant expert at Fantastic Gardeners. "I'd recommend looking for soft netting for the sides of fruit cages, fencing, or to support climbing plants but generally, mesh bags can serve the same purpose more or less."

Garden expert at LeisureBench Steve Chilton is a fan too. He explained: "This is effective for bug protection of the actual veg, and this is often the part of the plant that bugs love the most anyway. I also think it's effective for collecting seeds from flowers, rather than just letting them drop to the floor."

Steve did warn that you should be careful not to cover the flowers too early. He explained: "I think you really should be careful not to intrude pollinators from getting to the flowers. I wouldn't wrap the flower in the mesh until the flower has finished blooming and has drooped. If you wrap the flower up too early then you stop the pollinators from getting to the flower which will then prevent the flower from actually growing any seeds in the first place." The material has not been specifically developed for gardening, which is also worth bearing in mind.

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