Detoxing the Tunnel

It’s been nearly a year now since the polytunnel went up (and what a learning curve that’s been!), and it’s time for the annual bath. Like everything else under the sun that gets rained on, tunnels eventually accumulate a coating of algae - nasty green gunk that’s always worse on the north side. This can reduce light transmission into the tunnel by a fair old amount; I can’t find any actual figures for this, but both my eyes and my non-linear light meter could detect the difference with no trouble at all so it must be quite a bit.

On the outside of the tunnel the only thing that matters is to shift the algae, so a very dilute soapy solution is fine. On the inside, however, it’s not possible to rinse the surface off so well without everything being awash, and whatever you use will end up in the soil; for that reason a naturally-derived bactericidal and fungicidal cleaner (such as Citrox or Armillatox) is a better idea.

So out the clan Hedge went, along with No. One Son’s friend Ed the Fashionably Late, armed with various technical equipment such as a mop and bucket (not much seen around ours as WP’s opinion is that Dull Women Have Immaculate Homes). The digitametronic camera came too, fulfilling its allotted role in proceedings by running out of battery power just as the first shot was lined up. “It’ll only take five minutes,” I opined, as we foolishly entrusted the hose to No. One Son.

The lower reaches of Mt. Polytunnel were reached easily enough with the nice soft nylon brush I very occasionally use for the car, and hosed down straight afterwards (along with anyone standing even remotely close by) by N1S. The upper section of the tunnel is a bit harder if you have anything larger than the smallest models of course. There are various strategies for dealing with this, but my favourite idea was to “floss” it with a sheet dipped in the cleaning water and wrapped round a knotty old bit of rope, which is dragged from side to side over the spine of the tunnel as you might dry your own back with a towel.

The technique itself worked really well, although we needed to put elastic bands round it at intervals to stop it from slipping; what made it a bit more difficult (once the fifteen-minute argument about how the sheet was going to be secured had been settled) was that the two tunnel-flossers couldn’t see each other and were both shouting at once, so that they ended up pulling at the same time causing the tunnel to creak alarmingly, and also causing me to shriek like a girl. Eventually I had to stand astride the wall at the top end where they could both see me, shouting “Left! Right! Left! Right!” like the oarsmaster on a slave galley.

Once we got into the spirit of the thing cleaning the polytunnel was quite easy, bar a bit of poking around with a mop at the seams where the film was originally folded by the manufacturer. Actual duration of my “five minutes” was around two hours, but it’ll be quicker next time as now we know what we’re doing.

…er, don’t we?

This entry was posted on 05/04/2007 at 02:37 pm and is filed under learning curve, polytunnel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.