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Another image of the cage is shown at the top of the Home Page.

This cage can be used for protecting fruit and many other crops from such diverse pests as pigeons and cabbage white butterflies. Netting of a smaller mesh size can be used, to protect against smaller insect pests.

The cage above is 155cm high at its maximum, 4.8m long and 4.0m wide - but each of these dimensions can be increased or decreased very easily. (I also have a design, not shown here, which uses another pole to make a dome, with more headroom.) These are some of its advantages:

• It's by far the cheapest and easiest way of constructing a cage.
• It can be dismantled or moved very easily as well as constructed very easily. Two people can carry the cage to a new position. One person can dismantle it and move it to a new position in a few minutes. Why continue to protect crops when the need for protection is over? The inflexible traditional cage makes this almost obligatory. Why continue to protect strawberries when your strawberries are no longer in danger of attack? Why continue to protect your raspberries when now it's your Brussels sprouts or sprouting broccoli or cabbage which need protecting.? The cage can be used to the full after the summer and early autumn crops to protect winter crops.
• The dimensions of the cage can be changed very easily. In this way, too, it's far more flexible than the fruit and vegetable cages which are commercially available. More sections are added to the flexible support to make it higher - up to about 3m high. Sections are taken away to make the cage lower. Alternatively, a very long section can be used which has a low arch, quite near to the ground, to protect low-growing crops such as strawberry plants - the lower the height, the greater the area which can be protected by the same netting. The same system, after adding or taking away sections from the flexible support, protects a small strawberry bed and even an apple tree - although not very large apple trees.
• Appearance of the plant. Whatever the plant, it will look far better without netting protection. Raspberries aren't the most beautiful of plants, but when they're growing healthily and vigorously they can delight the eye - if, that is, they're not simply glimpsed behind the netting of a fruit cage.
• Appearance of the cage. The traditional rectangular fruit or vegetable cage doesn't have particular visual strength.. It simply sits there. The graceful, curving lines of the PHD cage are attractive, I think.
• At times in the year when nothing at all needs protecting, it's far better that the cage should be dismantled and put away. This takes a prohibitively long time in the case of the traditional cage, no time at all in the case of the PHD cage, which is stored as a small package.The reason for dismantling cages is that UV light harms the netting, shortening its life, and rain has a damaging effect upon poles. Manufacturers may claim that the netting is 'UV stabilized' and that the poles are specially treated, but there's no escaping the fact that being outside shortens the life of equipment.
• Perhaps a minor consideration, given the mild winters in recent years, although some future winters may be very different - the sloping sides of this design shed snow, the flat netting which forms the roof of the traditional design doesn't, and can be damaged by accumulation of snow. (See Dr D G Hessayon, 'The Fruit Expert,' Page 59.)

This cage makes use of a lightweight, flexible support, which is readily available, although not in shops which sell gardening equipment. It doesn't employ the fairly thick and heavy tubing of the traditional cage. This is an advantage, I think. There's a saving in cost and material, and a saving in material imposes less of a pressure on resources. A cage doesn't have to withstand great forces. It doesn't have to withstand great wind forces. Obviously, even gale-force winds can't blow the netting away. It doesn't have to bear heavy loads, except for snow. A lightweight structure is perfectly capable of doing the job, and a heavy, solid structure would be excessive.

The cage can be constructed perfectly easily without using boards, simply by pushing the ends of the support into the ground and using pegs to secure the netting, as in the photograph above. I also have a system which replaces the pegs with a thin, curved pole lying flat on the ground. The advantage is that it allows the netting to be lifted for access to the crops very quickly. The pegs take a little. time to remove.

Alternatively, the ends of the long support are simply slotted into the two metal stakes which support two of the boards surrounding a bed. The boards are tilted slightly rather than being vertical. This is yet another use for boards, then. (For some other uses, please see the page on boards.) Not shown in this diagram, the simple fixings which make the design more efficient and enable it to be erected more quickly.

Commercially available fruit cages are used for taller crops. For less tall crops, gardeners have usually made their own netting protection system. An established method is shown in the well-known book by Dr D G Hessayon 'The Fruit Expert' (Page 59.) There are wooden stakes, or canes, which support the netting, which tends to sag at numerous places. Each stake is covered with an upturned plant pot. There are bricks at intervals to hold down the netting and prevent birds from entering. I've used this established method, and I found it so frustrating to use that I made an effort to find an alternative.

The routine work of getting inside the structure for weeding or harvesting should be achieved with the minimum of effort. My design achieves this. A flat board, the thin pole which lies on the ground or the pegs can be removed in a very short time, and the netting can then be lifted up.

Netting can be a frustrating material. It's easily caught on angular surfaces, including the plant pots used in the established home-made design. My design minimizes this problem, since the flexible support is curved, not angular.

Sprouting broccoli and its advantages

I use the cage amongst other things for protecting sprouting broccoli - shown in the image a the top of this page. In winter and early spring, it's often attacked by pigeons.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall gives a very good appreciation of sprouting broccoli in his book 'The River Cottage Year.' (Page 67). (His comments can be applied to a large extent to white forms as well as purple forms. White varieties, as Joy Larkcom writes, are 'somewhat smaller, less prolific and less hardy, but have excellent flavour.')

'I dedicate more and more ground to purple sprouting broccoli each year. I just can't get enough of the stuff. This year I have both early and late varieties and they look all set for a bumper crop. I love it because it is such a generous vegetable: sweet and succulent, bursting with good things like a spring tonic, and it keeps on coming.' (But a disadvantage is that it occupies the land for a long time.)

Jane Grigson writes, in 'Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book' (Page 111): 'Broccoli are among the best variations on the cabbage theme. Inasmuch as they are flowering shoots, they come closer to cauliflower but taste much nicer. They are as near to a fine vegetable as the brassicas ever get, with the exception of Chinese leaf.'

Simone Beck and Julia Child (in 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' Volume II, Page 445) write '...fresh broccoli, properly prepared, is certainly one of our most attractive vegetables, both visually and gastronomically...it is more tender in taste and texture than cauliflower as well as being far more colourful.' They also give valuable information about 'Preparing broccoli for cooking:' 'When we speak of the delights of fresh broccoli properly prepared, we are talking about peeling the stems and stalks before cooking the broccoli. If you have subsisted on unpeeled broccoli, you will find that peeled broccoli is an entirely different vegetable, which cooks in 5 to 6 minutes, remains fresh and green, and is tender from stalk to tip. In fact we have the same feeling about unpeeled broccoli that we do about unpeeled asparagus - neither is a gastronomical object.' There follows an explanation of exactly how to peel broccoli - not as exhaustive or exhausting as some of the explanations in their two volumes, which do tend to make cooking into an operation which tests stamina, patience and dedication to the absolute limit. (The comment on bread-making is 'Although it will take you a minimum of 7 hours from start to finish for most of these recipes...)

Unlike broccoli, nettles aren't a 'gastronomical object.' They're free of charge, available in large quantities, gathering them gives a certain satisfaction, and is painless if gloves are worn, but if not a mediocre food source, they certainly have a mediocre taste. The best use for them that I've found- far preferable to such a dish as nettle soup, off-putting in its vivid green colour and in taste - is in combination with sprouting broccoli. The nettles complement the broccoli in texture and colour and although they have far less taste, they act as an 'extender' of the broccoli, making it go much further. It's important to realize that broccoli, and the broccoli-nettle mixture, cools quickly, and this isn't a dish which gains by being eaten lukewarm.

In 'Food for free,' Richard Mabey gives useful information about gathering and cooking nettles. (People without masochistic tendencies should perhaps ignore his recipe for nettle soup.) The time for gathering young nettles overlaps the season for picking broccoli.

'Nettles should not be picked for eating after the beginning of June. In high season the leaves become coarse in texture, unpleasantly bitter in taste and decidedly laxative. The best time of all for them is when the young shoots are no more than a few inches high. Pick the whole of these shoots, or, if you are gathering later in the year, just the tops and the young pale green leaves...

'Before cooking your nettles remove the tougher stems and wash well...as a straight vegetable they should be boiled gently in a closed pan for about four minutes, in no more water than adheres to the leaves after washing. Strain off the water well, add a large knob of butter and plenty of seasoning (and perhaps some chopped onion), and simmer for afurther five minutes turning and mashing all the while. The resuting puree is interestingly fluffy in texture, but rather insipid in taste, and for my money nettles are better used as additions to other dishes than as vegetables in their own right.'

Added to sprouting broccoli, with butter, nettles come into their own.

To return to the cultivation of sprouting broccoli, after this look at its use in cooking, broccoli has these advantages, amongst others:

• Relative ease of cultivation. It's much easier to grow than cauliflower, and probably easier than any of the other brassicas, except for kale.
• Relative hardiness. Purple sprouting broccoli is hardier than white flowering. Of the useful crops available to us which can survive the winter - or at least a winter which isn't very harsh - then purple sprouting broccoli has a good claim to being particularly important. It's more valuable, in strict economic terms, than overwintering onions or cabbages or Brussels sprouts (which can all be bought cheaply). Kale, which is very hardy, isn't as widely available as any of these, but its coarse taste, even with the most careful cooking, makes it a less valuable crop, overall, than broccoli. A November sowing of a broad bean variety such as Aquadulce Claudia or The Sutton will provid beans in June (unless the winter has been very severe) but in most places it's best to wait until February and to use cloches.
• Sprouting broccoli has the advantage that it gives fresh food during the 'hungry gap.' The time period that that phrase includes varies from year to year, but generally includes March and April.