- Author: Kathy Low
I've never used a cloche, so I thought it was time to experiment with a modern cloche. If you're unfamiliar with a cloche (in French cloche means bell), it's a bell-shaped plant cover. Invented in 1623 in France,* cloches were initially made from glass. They're placed over plants to protect them from cold weather. But on sunny days the cloches could get too hot, damaging the plant covered. Also, early glass cloches needed to be raised during the day to provide air circulation. Today's modern cloches are made of plastic with a ventilation hole or holes on top.
In mid-March I decided to experiment with planting three Black Cherry Tomato seedlings outdoors in planters. One seedling I left uncovered, one I covered with a plastic cloche, and the third one I covered with my tomato accelerator, i.e. a tall round season extender made of plastic with a mesh zippered top to let in the air and rain. By mid-April, the seeding left uncovered succumbed to the wild temperature swings we experiences (with daytime temperatures raging from the upper 80's to low 60's on several occasions during those four weeks). The seedling under the cloche grew to a little over a foot tall. But the seedling under the tomato accelerator grew twice as fast and twice as tall and has a much stronger stem than the one grown under the cloche.
Despite the two holes on the top of the plastic cloche, during the day there would be condensation on the cloche if the soil was damp. One of the benefits of both the cloche and the season extender is that they protected the young plants from strong winds and hungry wild rabbits, ground squirrels and other wildlife that like to chew off the tops of young seedlings.
I don't know why the seedling under the tomato accelerator grew much better than that under the cloche, but I suspect it may have to do with better air circulation. All I know is I will continue to prefer my tomato accelerator over the cloche for my tomato seedlings. But now I have the cloche covering my cucumber seedlings and they're growing very fast!
* Voyle, Gretchen. “The glass garden cloche: one of gardening's forgotten inventions.” “https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_glass_garden_cloche_one_of_gardenings_forgotten_inventions. Accessed 4/11/22.
