How to protect a plant from animals

This article is taken from Five Gallon Ideas, which features over 100 uses for 5 gallon buckets with more being added all the time.

If you’re growing plants in your garden, you might notice your young plants suffering from animals that eat them. Rabbits, rodents, birds, insects, there are a wide range of animals out there that can harm a young growing plant. To get your plant through those first fragile months, there’s an easy solution: A five gallon bucket plant protector! We’ll show you how to make one yourself in this article!

Materials

The supplies you will need to get are very simple:

–A five gallon bucket. A five gallon bucket should be cheap and easy to get. You’re going to cut into your bucket, so don’t get a brand new one, get an old one for free that would have ended up on a landfill otherwise. Check out our list of stores that hand them out for free.

–Something to cut the bucket with. We can recommend an oscillating multitool. If you have something else you can cut a bucket with, that’s fine too. You could even use a Stanley knife!

–A paint strainer bag. You can buy these in bulk on Amazon, for roughly a dollar a piece. You could probably get them at your local hardware store too, but then you’d have to take time out of your day to drive there.

All together, you could drive your total cost down to around two dollar per plant protector, assuming you manage to get your five gallon bucket for free.

How to make the plant protector

Well, to be honest, it’s not very difficult. You take the bucket, cut holes into it so the sunlight can get through, then you pull the paint strainer bag over the bucket and your plant protector is finished. You can see how it’s done in this video:

Alternative options

There are many other things you could also consider to keep your plants safe. For very young plants, you can just take a glass jar and turn it into a greenhouse. It will keep most insects out, which are the biggest concern for most people. You could also put up a scarecrow to keep birds away.

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