Hi Bfreeman. I've been all over this row cover thing for about 10 years. Our garden feeds us year round, which is no great feat in Cal. Row covers build up soil diseases very quickly. I cover 3 of my 12 beds every winter for a 4 year rotation. Row covers don't allow you to grow anything you couldn't anyway, but help a few things to grow better. Their primary benefits are higher daytime temps, protection from chilling winds, and minor frost protection. I currently grow spinach, celery, lettuce, and parsley under row covers. Outside are kale, carrots, turnips, and beets, all of wich were started in the summer. I get a jump on starting corn, and transplanting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants with row covers. My row covers consisted of 1/4" pencil steel (available at ready mix concrete companies) cut into 80" lengths and bent around a car tire to form a hoop, then stuck in the ground, covered with .7mil x 9' x 12' painters plastic available at Walmart a buck apiece. Plastic lasts one season and then gets recycled with grocery bags. I've since formalized the setup with a 1/2" rebar frame and 3/8' round instead of 1/4". I've gardened in zone 9, and my experience was that getting crops in early, roots established, and up to size before November was the real key. Row covers aren't that valuable at z9 temps. Of course sweet peas start great outdoors in January in z9.

I've started my cucumber plants under Agribon for several years, as I also do for young squash plants. Insects (cuke beetles, squash bugs, SVB) would quickly destroy any vine crop seedlings I left unprotected. I had a lot of years that were total losses for squash & cukes, prior to using covers - and only a few minor losses since. When the cukes begin to bloom, I remove the covers & train the vines to a trellis. In my area, where there are wild cucumbers & pickle farms to sustain their population, cucumber beetles will always fly in from the surrounding area. I don't know whether they overwinter where their host plants were the year earlier, since I rotate the location of my vine crops each year (good practice for any crop). I've never had them appear under the covers. It seems that if I cover the vine crops early, and miss the first egg-laying cycle, only a few beetles appear later in the season. These are in far fewer numbers than I would expect otherwise, and the mature plants are healthy enough that they generally do little damage. However, they can still infect wilt-susceptible cucumbers, even mature plants. Growing a disease-resistant variety, or a parthenocarpic variety which can be kept covered, will overcome this. For wilt-susceptible varieties, spreading single plants throughout the garden - rather than together in one place - will increase chances for success. The bees can find them more easily than the beetles. While row covers themselves are fairly inexpensive, that can't be said for the methods offered of holding them down. Ground staples are pretty pricey, especially if you need a lot of them. The same can be said of the clips used to fasten fabric row covers to PVC hoops. I tried making my own ground staples, by cutting single-row strips from 4-foot-wide concrete remesh; it worked well, but they were a pain to remove at year's end. Personally, I would recommend just allowing the fabric to float over the vines. It will be pushed up by the foliage, provided that the cover is allowed enough slack for it to do so. The most economical way to secure a cover is to bury the edges. I spread the cover, use bamboo skewers to hold the edges in place, and cover them with several inches of soil. Water the soil over the edges to bond it to the fabric, and to seal the edges. Be sure to leave enough slack for the plants to grow. If you need access, leave one side unburied, holding it down with something which can be easily removed. I use 10-foot lengths of 1/2" rebar rod, but boards held down by bricks would work as well. Whatever is used to hold down the open end, the edges should be lightly buried after each entry, since the beetles will crawl under any edge left unsealed. Also, round off any sharp edges which might chafe against the fabric as the wind moves it back & forth. Another reason I found that I like using soil... it has no sharp edges. ;-) The buried cover will resist all but the strongest winds, since it will tend to lay flat. Oh, and it will keep out slugs as well, unless they were there before the cover was applied. Maybe a little OT, but one last note, regarding cucumber beetles. My observations seem to indicate that the use of fertilizer on vine crops increases their attractiveness to cucumber beetles. They locate their host plants by scent, so it may be that the accelerated growth caused by fertilization increases the production of the chemicals which attract them. It doesn't seem to matter if the fertilizer is chemical or organic. Attacks by other insects (such as squash bugs on squash) also seem to encourage attack by cucumber beetles. I don't protect all of my squash with row cover, since Tromboncino is naturally resistant to SVB & can fight off squash bugs & cuke beetles on its own when healthy. If I find a swarm of cucumber beetles on a young Tromboncino vine, there is nearly always an adult squash bug somewhere on the plant... so the beetles actually act as my "early warning" for the first squash bugs. I've inspected all plants several times when I first observed this, and only the plants with squash bugs had swarms of beetles attacking them. It allows me to catch the squash bugs early, before they have laid eggs.

I'd try growing them first and see if it's a problem. If so, grow the affected veggies in a different part of the garden next year and try row covers then. However, you have to remove the covers in any case once the plants flower in order to allow pollination, so they're not a guaranteed preventive. Generally, I think you're better off growing things that don't have established pests, and following growing practices that won't invite them in. Chief among these are good drainage, full sun, well-dug beds (for drainage and root room), soil composition (especially amending with compost), not crowding your plants too much (for root room, sun penetration, and air circulation), and weeding.

Results can be mixed with row covers in your case. The plus side is that you will have frost protection and the covers usually allow excess daytime heat to escape. Thicker rowcovers may even provide a 5-6 degree temperature buffer but then they block out much more light. For spring plantings I think the thinner Agribon 17 or 19 brands are preferred. I never liked pulling row covers over tomato cages and I believe chicken wire would give similar results. It snags and tears easily if pulled over rough surfaces. You might try to arrange wrie hoops that allow the fabric to slide over the covered area without snagging. Keep in mind that your short term goal is to keep frost potential off plants. Temperature lows in the forties may cause cartfacing of developing flowers but if your plants are just transplanted then the coldest days of spring will be gone by the time that flower development becomes an important issue.