Allotments 4 All

I am a newbie posting, although have been lurking on this site for some time!!  It's great!! I have 4 raised beds in my garden which my other half built for me.  I live in Northumberland.  I am new to veggie gardening, and seed growing etc (but have been a keen gardener for a few years).
I have ordered some brassica plug plants from Dobies, and want to know whether to plant these through weed suppressing membrane, or black plastic, or nothing.  There are a few cats around (including mine!) who are scratching and digging in the beds and I wondered if a covering would stop them.
Also, do I need to give winter protection with either fleece, or home-made low polytunnel.  If I do use plastic covers over the plants, how do I know the plants are getting enough water over winter, or do I need to water by hand.   I read in one of my books that putting plastic on the ground over winter stops it getting too wet, but I assume that was unplanted areas.
As you can tell, I don't know that much, and am a bit confused about what is best to do!
Helen

Don't panic.

Dobies send info with the plants, and there are tons of peeps here who will weigh in with tons of advice on the watering/growing sides.

Some form of protection will be needed from the cats - try razor wire - but I'm a dog owner..

Only joking(honest)

We used to have 2 dogs, but they died of old age - decided to go the cat route this time - very different kettle of fish (so to speak!).   We are surrounded by cats anyway, so thought we'd join the club.  Helen

I wouldn't bother to much about planting the brassicas through any membrane, if the soil isn't too weedy already, but if you already have it you can. But brassicas like to be firmed in well. In fact I've stamped really hard around them when planting. Also plant an inch or two deeper than they've originally grown. If you want to protect over winter, I'd say fleece is adequate for brassicas. the water will get through it. Plastic is probably an overkill, these plants are usually quite hardy, although if you get really heavy rain, hail etc the outer leaves will get damaged but I find they get damaged anyway and just remove them before using.

I've ordered mine from Dobies too and will be planting them in undug ground but it's quite weed free (apart from some couch rearing its ugly head)  I won't be giving mine any protection from bad weather as they are winter hardy plants in that particular collection.  I might have to keep the pigeons off them with some sort of mesh though.  To keep pigeons off young brassicas I made a frame of canes and some het and those handy rubber balls with holes in (can't think what they're called)  Oh I remember now "build-a-ball"  Couldn;'t get them from the shops and had to buy them off the internet.  The frame I made worked very well and you can move it if you like as the plants get large enough to look after themselves.  It just gives them some protection from pigeons (cats) while they're little  :)

I have problems with cats digging up my transplants and making a deposit. After much frustration and various half measures I built wire cages. The cages are not big enough to contain fully grown brasicass so I remove the cages when the plants are well established. The cats only seem to like bare soil for toilet purposes so once the plants fill out the space the cats don't bother too much. Many of the half measures I tried made weeding difficult to impossible.

A larger cage would enable you to net over the brasicass and protect against cabbage white butterfly and pigeons too.

I have "borrowed" some wire baskets from Tesco's  :o and they make fine protectors for brassicas etc

Thank you all for your replies.  It is so good to get advice from other people.  I will get my OH to rig up some sort of protection from the cats (and football, cricket ball etc).  The weeds are due to the home produced compost (took about 2 years to rot down, but result great, expect for the array of weeds which sprout from it!  but I will have been able to hoe them off the bed before the plug plants arrive.  I'm glad they are hardy - I'll stop worrying quite so much now!  I'm sure I'll have lots more questions to ask, and will look forward to more advise :D

Oh you'll always get weeds sprouting up everywhere.  it just goes with the territory  ;D