DIY Wire Mesh Plant Cover to Keep the Bunnies Out

So my birthday was last week. Yay 43!! (sarcasm) I asked my family to put in a small herb garden for me. I thought that was a pretty brilliant idea.

I'm always using my garden for different things. As I've got older though, I have found that I have a true passion for gardening, and herbs in particular, so as you can imagine, this herb garden is a dream for me, and I love reading blogs like DIY Gardening to get some inspiration when it comes to what I want to do with the space. Getting this herb garden is the perfect way to start updating my garden because this is something that I've wanted to do for ages now. I've always wanted to have artificial grass as they require less maintenance than proper grass, and this artificial grass wholesale could be a great place for me to look for some. As my herb garden will grow and transform over time, I want the rest of my garden to complement it, so I can't wait to plant other trees and plants to make it look truly out of this world. Also, if you are looking for service providers to assist you with synthetic grass install, or buy artificial grass online, you could either do a google search or fall back on your local service providers.

Now I've got a beautiful herb garden and I don't have to try to find a place to store gifts that I really didn't need. My mother came over and helped my husband plant basil, cilantro, lemon thyme, rosemary, to name a few. And you know no herb garden at my house would be complete without course cat nip. 🙂

But as luck would have it, one of my little baby herb plants wasn't doing so well. And of course it would be the cilantro, which is the herb I use most in cooking. Now there are several things that affect herb gardens from soil nutrients to weeds, things that you would call in a gardening service like Trugreen OH to come and fix. But my problem seemed to be of an animal nature. Some garden critter - I'm thinking a bunny - also loves my cilantro. I kept finding the leaves eaten off of it. The poor little plant couldn't establish itself because every new leaf it managed to grow immediately got nibbled off.

I couldn't have that happen to my little baby cilantro, so I made a wire mesh plant cover. It lets the light and the water in, but keeps the bunnies out.

It's a wire mesh cover with a decorative knob at the top. The knob makes it easy to pick up, but really the reason I wanted it was because it's pretty. It makes the cover look more like a decorative cloche and not like an ugly plant cover.

It was super easy to make! All you need is a wire basket, a decorative knob, and a couple of 1/8" x 1" washers.

My original plan to make my own wire mesh basket didn't go as planned. I used this tutorial by Homemade By Carmona, and all went well until I went to fold the mesh up into the basket. The wire mesh that I used had been in a roll in our basement, I hadn't bothered to actually straighten the curl out of the mesh (like her tutorial very clearly says to do) before folding it into the basket. That was a fatal mistake and there was no making the sides square.

So what to do next? I cheated.

I went to Home Goods and bought an inexpensive wire mesh basket. Now, if you do this, not just any mesh basket will work. You'll need to find one that is large enough and tall enough, and that doesn't have handles cut into the side (because large holes in the sides would defeat the purpose of the basket), and one that looks good turned upside down.

Then, basket in hand, all I had to do was add a decorative knob.

The holes in the mesh were larger than the holes in the basket, so I used the washers to hold the knob in place, one on each side of the basket.

I also shortened the screw because it was intended to go through a cabinet door, which is considerably thicker than a wire basket. I say "I" did, actually my husband did it for me. If you don't want to mess with shortening the screw, you could see if you could find a replacement screw that's shorter. Or you just put extra washers under the basket to make up the difference.

So that's it. An easy gardening DIY!