Polytunnels!

The polytunnel is up at last!

It arrived earlier than I expected, when I was out at work (of course), and landed in twelve enormous pieces in my neighbour’s garden. You see, I live at the end of a street that is no longer a street, which is very good for my privacy, but confuses delivery men no end. They usually end up dumping things with my neighbours, whose cottage is the only one that can be seen from the road.

Luckily, I have lovely neighbours. So my polytunnel went the way of many deliveries, being handed over the wall, piece by piece, with the help of my neighbours’ American visitors, who’d already braved Icelandic volcanic ash to get here. How to see life in Snowdonia!

So I then had twelve pieces of polytunnel sitting in my living room….

I would like to say it was easy, and that I heroically put it up by myself. But I’d be lying. I took one look at the instructions (I don’t do instructions), had a large glass of wine, and phoned a friend. Several friends, in fact. One of whom had done this before (phew).

The first part seemed to take an awful lot of digging holes and measuring, and checking angles via Pythagoras. Not helped by the patch of nettles I’d been carefully preserving to make plant food. Plus the fact that we found the old base of the Victorian end-of-the-garden loo, which was impossible to budge, and means I’ve got a shallow patch of soil that is going to need a raised bed at some point.

The frame went up quite quickly, and suddenly it was real! I spent a few evenings digging and raking and getting out as many stones and bits of slate as possible and chopping down the last few bits of overhanging branches, and then we were ready for the covering. I’d arranged for plenty of friends to come and help for the big day, with homemade chocolate cake all ready. And, of course, after weeks of endless sun, it chose that day to rain. So we just ate the cake.

But the next evening was fine and finally the cover went on, with much huffing and puffing and pausing for thought.

And so now I am the proud owner of an 8ft x 10ft polytunnel. Having turned philosophical after doing my back in, I’m just concentrating on getting used to it for the moment, the plan to concentrate this year on starting things in the summer to grow over winter.

At the moment I’ve got lots of tomatoes, and an aubergine plant I got half price because it was almost dead but appears to be alive. I’ve put in a few squashes that appear to be flourishing, and three melons that seem to have died. And some nasturtians for colour.

Oh, and my vine. I thought long and hard about a vine and what kind to get. Then I remembered a flat I’d rented when I lived in London. It was on the ground floor of an old Victorian house with an old wooden conservatory and a grape vine that came from a cutting from the Hampton Court vine. The grapes, I remember, were delicious: small, black, sweet and juicy. A bit of research, and I discovered there were cuttings from the Hampton Court vine for sale. And not for a king’s ransom, either. And okay, so this isn’t exactly the banks of the Thames, but it’s definitely worth a try!

Which, I discovered, when the vine arrived (via my long suffering neighbours, yet again), meant even more digging. Lots of it. A huge hole outside the polytunnel, to be exact, with drainage and plenty of compost, a touch of limestone and plenty of bone meal. Phoebe the dog got very interested in the bone meal. Which might sound disgusting, but is positively civilized compared to the other things she snuffles out in the nice, newly dug, cat-friendly soil around the polytunnel. (I know, don’t even go there. How can a dog in a pink collar have such disgusting personal habits?)

So far it seems to be working. My vine is flourishing. And I’m enjoying pottering around of an evening, watching my tomatoes grow and plotting for the future. It’s a wonderful space, and its own little world. I’m getting used to opening it up every morning, and watering every night before I shut it up against slugs and the dark.

Time I think for a celebration. The elderflowers are just at their best. Time to try making elderflower champagne again. That was the sound of summer, when I was a little girl: the sound of elderflower champagne bottle popping gently under the sink…