Remay Sleeves

Hello!

I buy my Remay sleeve material in large rolls (2550 feet long by 67 inches wide) from a Garden Supply Center. Farmers typically use the long rolls to cover and protect crops, particulary early seedlings that birds might sabotage if left unprotected.

No, I'm not angry in the picture. The roll is just a bit awkward, and I'm not as young as I used to be.

Fortunately I have use of the school hallways after hours and during the summer to do my cutting.

The roll is set down at one end of a hundred feet plus hallway and unrolled over the tiled floor. The tiles are on twelve inch centers, and a sharp pair of scissors pushed through the grout depression makes a nice straight cut.

The sleeves depicted above are being cut to a length of 7.5 feet so I only get to use the grout depression for every other cut. Here I am only using half the length of the hallway. There is another half (beyond the closed doors), cluttered now with summer cleaning materials.

The first time I saw my father using remay cloth, I chuckled to myself as I handled the material. It is extremely light weight. One of those 7.5 foot sleeves weighs about as much as a McDonald's Hamburger, and we can all lift those with one hand! I never thought the material would hold up in the field.

It is remarkably strong, yet allows for lots of air circulation and light penetration. It is tear resistant, but subject to punctures so I make sure there are no stiff, dead projections coming from the trees or branches I wish to cover.

Above, you are looking through two layers of remay as I have folded the material in preparation for sewing.

I usually need two to three rolls each year to handle my own needs and to fill the orders that are received. That is much sewing and I am often at the machine for two hours at a time.

Most of my sleeves are made from twenty-four feet of material, folded to make a twelve foot long sleeve with an eleven foot circumference. These are ideal for pulling over the tops of small pin cherry, white birch and tamarack trees which I use for cecropia, luna and polyphemus, and columbia larvae, respectively.

I also use the other three sizes that I sell to cover various sized branches, smaller trees and shrubs, and even nettle or epilobium stalks. I fashion some special shapes to cover portable forms made out of plastic tubing to cover nettle patches. The forms could also be used over carrots or violets and are excellent for getting eggs from butterflies which do not oviposit in paper bags.

I have successfully sleeved nettles with four foot long sleeves to obtain hundreds of eggs from red admirals, commas, questionmarks, etc.. Hyles gallii oviposited very nicely for me on epilobium foliage on a live sleeved group of stalks.

Slightly larger sleeves over poplar, cherry and viburnum have been used to get eggs from white admirals, Canadian tiger swallowtails and Hemaris thysbe.

For the first several years that I began using remay, a single sleeve was all I needed to protect larvae from birds, parasitic wasps and most stinkbug attacks. However, a few years ago birds began raiding my sleeves. They would either tear through the material with their claws or peck with their beaks to get at big fat polyphemus larvae just about ready to spin. One year I lost over one thousand nearly full grown larvae to birds which were actually entering the sleeves through the tears they made. I encountered two young blue jays inside a sleeve on one inspection. Not only were my caterpillars being eaten, but sleeves were being destroyed.

I tried making some sleeves out of fibreglass screening but that did not stop the hungry avians.

Now I make a secondary sleeve out of bird netting to go over the remay sleeves. I purchase packages of one hundred foot long birdnetting that is seven feet wide to cover most of my sleeves.

Tomorrow, if it stops raining, we will go to the field to get some pictures of the actual sleeving process. It is much easier with a partner when using the long sleeves, but I still usually do most of it by myself, the material is that light and easy to use. I found out the hard way, not to wear any shirts with buttons when using the bird netting!

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