TikTok's Genius Lampshade Hack Will Protect Your Garden From Hungry Critters

Think twice before throwing out that busted lampshade in your living room because your garden plants just might benefit from it — you can upcycle the metal frame of a lampshade into a garden cloche. Cloches offer a way to extend the growing season for plants that need extra time to mature or need shielding from animals, and one TikToker says that covering a lampshade with chicken wire creates a cloche that protects seedlings and small plants from garden pests. 

The DIY project has some clear advantages, protecting against hungry rabbits in your garden and other opportunistic critters like squirrels and deer, while still providing air flow. On the other hand, it won't prevent insects or smaller critters from creepy-crawling their way onto your delectable plants, and there may be more economical ways to create a makeshift garden cloche. This TikTok lampshade cloche is a great choice if you already have an old lampshade on hand and you need to protect against larger animals, rather than itty-bitty bugs or birds. 

According to TikToker GG the Garden Girl, making a DIY lamp shade garden cloche is fairly simple — you don't need a lot of materials or time to get it done. You'll need your lamp shade frame, scissors, wire cutters, chicken wire, work gloves, and optional items like rust prevention spray paint. To make your cloche, use scissors to remove the shade material from the metal frame of the lampshade. Next, put on your work gloves and measure out enough chicken wire to cover the entire frame of the lamp shade, plus some excess to help secure the wire to the frame. Cut off the piece you need with wire cutters.

Then, place the wire over the frame so that it covers both the top and bottom. Bend the excess wire under the frame edges so the wire is inside of the frame. This secures the wire in place. After, you can embellish the cloche by painting it with a few coats of rust-proof paint, like Rustoleum spray paint, to protect against water and other corrosive elements. Once the paint is dry, your cloche is ready for the garden!

As frugal as this DIY lampshade garden cloche hack can be, there are a number of other items you can upcycle that are even kinder to your wallet. For example, you can protect your seedlings by using milk jugs. To do this, rinse and dry an empty milk jug. Then, with scissors, cut off the bottom of the jug. Place the jug over your plant and secure the jug in the soil with a stake that's attached to the handle of the milk jug. 

To allow airflow, you can remove the cap of the jug when it's hot outside and replace it when you need to keep insects like pesky aphids and spider mites off your plants. Similarly, you can repurpose a soda or water bottle to make an inexpensive cloche, following the same process to make the bottle cloche as that of the milk jug cloche. Plus, water and soda bottles come in a wider variety of sizes, so you have more options to choose from if you need to protect plants that are extra small or quite large.