Finally! they say. This is a little bit about the birth of our first tunnel. Our tunnel came from VP Structures. www.vpstructures.com.au. They are specialists in structures such as these here in South-east Queensland. Ours is a horticultural tunnel. The beauty of this one is that the side curtains roll up, revealing shade mesh, which allows more control over ventilation.
The instructions looked easy enough, and said that it would take two people two days. Well it took two days with Jim, Katrina and the three kids. The dogs were pretty much useless at this particular task and the pony didn’t care.
Levelling the ground anywhere around here is tricky at the best of times. With all the solid rock, it is not an easy task. Fortunately, we are lucky enough to have “Little Bobby”, our trusty bobcat. Don’t let his size fool you!
So with our ground flat, our measurements accurate, our holes dug (groan), and our materials laid out, we grew our first polytunnel, all according to the specifications and instructions. It is ten metres long, four metres wide and a height of 2.2 metres. It has a single hinged door on one end and the crank operated side curtains. The cover of the tunnel is natural Solarshield with white shadecloth on the sides. It is fantastic!
We purchased weedmat to lay on the floor of the tunnel, knowing that at this point we were putting most everything in pots. If we wanted to plant into soil in the tunnel, we would have to bring in topsoil and build it up quite a lot, as our soil on that part of the block is quite horrible – and hard to dig!
We installed a watering system of overhead sprinklers which uses water gathered in the tank we had installed at the shed. It has a small but powerful pump which generates the pressure needed to get the water to the tunnel. We put half a dozen plants in the tunnel, tested the watering, got soaked, and opened a bottle of bubbly!
We have had problems in the tunnel of aphids, ants, bacterial wilt, and mice! A rather large branch came down earlier this year, and put a hole in the Solarshield covering, and the mice ate a hole in the shadecloth. Nothing that cannot be fixed with a roll of gaff tape! The tunnel is looking good for this coming winter, and hopefully we will have a healthy crop of fresh chillies over the winter months.