High on my initial
to-do list for our new house and garden was a tunnel house to grow
tomatoes.
Better late than never, I have now put up a structure
that resembles what technically is called a tunnel house. I had a
very strong urge to Do-It-Myself the tunnel house, Thomas was more in
favour of at least buying a kit to set up, but I youtubed some
helpful and non-helpful, mostly North-American men putting up tunnel
houses (or just talking about their lettuce). It seemed pretty easy,
and the main worry of N-American men and their tunnel-houses, snow
storms, isn’t an issue here, so off we went to the tool store.
Four helpful kiwi-men’s advice and 463$ later, we had the ingredients, and I set about putting up my tunnel. This went well, although I am sure some people wouldn’t quite agree with the half screwed in screws, and I didn’t see the point of having a precisely level tunnel either, but it seems quite sturdy enough for Norwester storms.
The next morning I was going to put on the sides, but I hadn’t watched the videos well enough nor thought this through well enough, so that turned into a bit of a disaster, and I decided to leave the tunnel open for the moment. All I wanted was a form of rainprotection for the tomatoes anyway.
Now I have a bit of
a seasonal issue with the strawberries and tomatoes being in there at
the same time until I take out the strawberries after
Christmas, and having 10 tomato plants, a cucumber, 2 artichokes and
a pepper is perhaps also already calling for a larger tunnel, but it
will have to make do for now.
I hadn’t quite
anticipated how large and relatively ugly the tunnel would be, but
the thought of lots of tomatoes and cucumbers and artichokes makes up
for that.
Let the tunneling begin!
