What's growing in the polytunnel?

We've finally got to the stage of growing things in our polytunnel.  Over the last couple of weeks it's gradually been filling up with seed trays and pots. We've had to find staging to put it all on and being into recycling, well that's resulted in a real hotch potch of different sorts of ways to support all these seed trays and pots. We've got staging from old abandoned grow houses, bricks supporting planks of wood or wire trays. But we love seeing all those pots and trays of things growing. 

How exciting it is to go into the polytunnel and check up on the seedlings and see how they have grown. We've got our onions and garlic growing in cell trays, they will soon be ready to plant outside. We have a big pot of carrot seeds just germinated, we struggle growing carrots in the ground because of root fly so thought we'd start some off early in pots in the warmth of the polytunnel.  Then there are brassicas--cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprout, calabrese. There are  beetroot, broad beans, courgette, leeks, lettuce, sweet peas and sunflowers.  We also have a length of guttering  planted up with pea seeds.  That's a new way of planting for us, but we're trying it out. A lot of the seedlings are covered in fleece for extra protection against the cold nights.

I went the allotment this week, I hadn't been for two days, the lettuce, beetroot and peas were all starting to come through, the brassicas had grown about an inch in height and the onions were looking ready to plant out as soon as the soil warms up. It's amazing what a few days of warmth and sunshine can do.

Polytunnel or greenhouse?

 

The work on the allotment polytunnel is nearly finished. Last weekend R started covering the frame with the sheeting and he managed to do all but the door.  On Sunday morning he covered the roof and in the afternoon Helen and I couldn't wait to get started so we moved in to dig over the soil. We plan to have a flagged path in the middle with a border each side.  The soil is like the rest of the soil on the plot--heavy clay.  So we will have to incorporate plenty of organic matter to break the clay up before we can plant directly into the soil.

I brought some pots of chilli plants from home and put them in there standing on some wooden boards and Helen planted up some potatoes in bags of compost.  We've both tried before to grow potatoes a this time of year for cropping at Christmas, but without success.  We thought we would try them under cover this time and see if that works.

Working away in the growhouse we were full of ideas and plans for what we could grow in there.

Since then we have had two days of continuous heavy rain which has certainly tested out the drains which R has built recently. Unfortunately the rain was collecting on the growhouse roof in places so some adjustments had to be made.

So there it is, still things to be done, but very nearly complete. Most of it has been made from the frame of the old cabin. We've had to buy the polythene covering and a small amount of extra wood.

We're now trying to decide whether it's a polytunnel, greenhouse or growhouse. We originally set out to have a polytunnel, but it's not really a tunnel. It's probably more like a greenhouse. Polyhouse maybe?