Polytunnel & Fruit Trees
It’s a hot sunny day in mid-May and the polytunnel is finally up and ready for business! This has been an epic build by Dave using a lot of trial and error but it’s all turned out brilliantly in the end.
Polytunnel Exterior
The polythene was easy to stretch over the frame but it was a little tricky to wrap the plastic around the ends neatly and cut off the excess. After a long hot day an argument about the origami of polytunnels was not something either of us really enjoyed!
Initially we didn’t plan on having anything supporting the plastic except the water pipework that forms the roof arc, but when rainwater found a way to form a puddle in the roof it proved too heavy and squished one of the pipes. In response Dave added some additional internal support poles, which have had the additional benefit of providing a frame for shelving which I’m now using for my seedlings!
Polytunnel Interior
In the picture on the right you can see the shelves in the upper left, a few tomatoes below, and a row of peppers on the upper right. There are also some leeks still growing in pots, which are doing nicely. Unlike spring onions, none of the wildlife seems to like taking my leeks so they’ve survived to adolescence while every spring onion I’ve put in the ground or in pots has vanished within days of appearing. What you can’t see in the pic are the dozen or so tomato plants just out of shot. They’re hugely enjoying the warmth! I’ve been warned to keep good ventilation in the polytunnel though or the tomatoes might suffer from blight.
Also planted in the polytunnel are basil, coriander, parsley, beetroot, brussels and a few rows of carrots, which have been so far singularly unsuccessful on our outdoor plots. Not sure what’s taking them, but no point fighting it. So it’s indoor security for the orange roots for the time being.
View up to the Polytunnel
Down at the lower end of the garden, I’ve now finished and painted the steps that lead up to the polytunnel.
Veg Plots, Lower Level
I think they’ve turned out pretty well and I got to play with Dave’s circular saws into the bargain. Dave’s mum (a life long horticulturalist) gave us several pots of ornamental plants for the garden so I’ve given over a couple of plots to flowers rather than veg production. This goes against my self-sufficiency raison d’etre but I can’t deny it looks good. So it’s two plots of flowers and two of potatoes between the stairway to polytunnel-land.
The broad beans continue to flourish. Little bit of nibbling from slugs and insects but nothing that’s slowing the plants down. Actually I’m finding the slug problem isn’t nearly as bad up here above the house as it is in the tiny plot outside the front door. I’ve put in a load of cabbages and celeriac (kindly supplied as seedlings by our neighbour) and they appear to be thriving despite the odd slug slime trail appearing on their leaves.
We’re currently trying the non-lethal approach to slug prevention, mainly because Dave doesn’t want to cause problems for the birdlife or indeed our cat that might come from using poison. It remains to be seen whether we will need to escalate to more cruel warfare techniques. So far, I’ve lost entire crops of spring onions (twice), carrots and radishes (until they reached a certain size, after which the slugs stopped attacking the leaves and started going after the root instead). Curse their little slimy hides. Maybe we need to get some ducks. But to get ducks we need to dig a new pond, and so the work goes on.
The whole exercise has been one of pure joy so far, let me state that without any prevarication. In the last month I lost my job with the hedge fund after they got credit crunched, but I don’t really mind. I will need to find new ways of earning a living but for the time being it’s good to be able to spend my time on things that make me feel good about myself and the world. Both of us own narrowboats back in London which we’re intending to sell over the summer. This will give us the breathing space to build new lives out here in Ferryside. And I’m looking for short term IT contracts to tide us over. I don’t absolutely need to get one, but if I did, it would definitely help, and make big capital expenditures like fitting a woodstove, new water heating system and solar panels easier to manage.
I wish I could say “I should have done this years ago,” but then I couldn’t have afforded to do it years ago, and I didn’t know Dave years ago, and what’s more I wouldn’t have been psychologically ready to give up my ‘career’ until I’d put my all into it. So I can only say I took the opportunity when I was good and ready and who can say fairer than that really?
I feel like there’s another period of my life now beginning. I’m not so much different to who I was ten years ago, but I feel like I’ve walked a long journey, reached the end, and am now starting out on another trip into the unknown. Almost like having another life. It makes me wonder where and who I’ll be in another ten years.
For now, selling the narrowboat is my main objective. But first she needs to pass her boat safety test, and to do that I need to pump out the toilet, thus lifting her a few inches out of the water and emptying the gas storage locker which must be clear of water to pass said boat safety. All very convoluted. And then it’s off to the dry dock for bottom blacking. And then we need to give her a fresh coat of coach paint. It’s a good thing I’m unemployed otherwise I’d never have time for any of this stuff!