New cloche

I bought a new cloche from Wilkinson's. Well, actually I bought two at a fiver each, although I currently think one might have been enough. The reason I wanted it was for the hoops, so I could use them to protect my carrots from carrot fly with fleece. But I've now realised that actually I can bring my veg on faster by using them as cloches with the plastic they came with.

I've used it with carrots for now anyway. I'll probably set the other one up so that I can start hardening off my seedlings in April later. It was easy enough to make. I just put the plastic rods together with the connectors to make longer rods, then pushed the ends of these into the ground to make hoops. They didn't make beautifully even ones like in the photo on the packet, but then the cover the hoops come with isn't the same one as on the packet either. They're good enough, and it was never going to be a beautifying feature for the garden.

The instructions said to do them about 50 cm apart, but actually the plastic they came with was cut on the generous side, so I ended up doing them about 55 cm apart. Although, to get the full 200 cm the packet advertises, you'd need to put the hoops about 67 cm apart, because there are only 4 of them. I'm not convinced the plastic is long enough to quite do that. Someone in the instructions and marketing department hasn't quite thought this through. Luckily I wasn't banking on a length of precisely 200 cm.
You pin the ends down with metal pegs.

You can buy more to pin the sides down or you can do it with stones. I used pretty heavy stones, but they've come off one side already because of the wind. I think you probably need something as heavy as a brick. I'm not going to buy any more metal pegs because I think if I put them straight through the plastic, the wind will just tear the plastic. And also, I'm pretty sure I can make good enough metal pegs myself out of an old metal coat hanger if I need any. I might try trapping the plastic under bamboo canes and pinning the ends of those to the grounds.
Having bought the cloche, I've ended up changing my original plan of how to plant the carrots and beetroots. The carrots are now going to be all along the cloche, which now encroaches into the area I'd planned for the beetroot, and I'm going to plant a line of beetroot along the back of the cloche because it doesn't need to be protected from carrot fly.

I've got one more cloche left to put up, but I haven't thought through where yet. Best to give my back a rest and leave it till next week I reckon.

Edited: in the end I completely ignored my own intentions and decided that the £2 for 10 metal wire pins was well worth not having to try to cut through a metal coathanger. I stuck an extra one at the far end that had come loose, then pinned the side that kept blowing up down with two metal pins keeping down a piece of bamboo, but not piercing the plastic. I also found a couple of extra bricks in the garden, so added those and it looks a lot messier, but it hasn't come loose yet.