Use One Handy Kitchen Staple To Protect Your Garden's Broccoli

If at dinner you enjoy eating vegetables you've grown yourself, then growing broccoli can be an ideal option and a tasty addition to your vegetable garden. Unfortunately, you might not be the only one that thinks so. There are plenty of pests that will make a meal out of your broccoli heads and leaves even before they're ready to be harvested. That includes insects like aphids, cabbage root maggots, cutworms, diamondback moth caterpillars, and flea beetles. There are also a few larger animals that will nibble on your broccoli plants, such as deer, gophers, and rabbits. Although they can decimate your garden if left unchecked, there is one staple you likely already have in your kitchen that can protect your broccoli as it grows. All you need is some aluminum foil.

That's according to a handy tip from TikToker @urbangreener, an urban edible gardener who demonstrated that using aluminum foil as a little cap for your floret-topped veggie can protect it overnight. In response, another TikTok user took to the comments to ask (in a wonderfully cheeky way), "Does it actually FOIL the pests?" Indeed, it does. Of course, you can't simply wrap the entire broccoli plant with aluminum foil; which would take a ridiculous amount of time and might even end up damaging the plants. Instead, you need a gentle touch and a little know-how to make this gardening hack work.

You might be wondering how and why an aluminum foil cap is going to help protect your garden's broccoli in this situation, but we assure you that it's worth a try. To do so, simply rip off a piece of foil that's large enough to cover the broccoli head and still leave some extra foil on all sides. In @urbangreener's TikTok video, which has earned nearly 12,000 views as of writing, he curves the foil around the top of the broccoli and shapes it until it's tucked all the way around. He notes that you also want to make sure that foil covers the entire bottom area right up to the stem and leaves. Now, do the same thing to the rest of your garden's broccoli heads and leave them overnight.

Although night might be the prime time for critters to attempt to eat your vegetables, they won't be able to do so because the foil will act as a protective barrier. In the morning, you can take each foil cap off of the broccoli heads so that they can soak up the sun. If you don't want to waste an entire roll of aluminum foil each night, then save the caps so you can reuse them as many times as needed. When someone in the comments asked about the hack, @urbangreener vouched for its effectiveness, writing, "It really does work to deter rodents."