16/12/2008 by admin.

…click here

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

08/05/2007 by admin.

This week, I have been finding out what buddhists are like when they’re annoyed.* The occasion to find this out was my first ever visit to Wales, which was made in true destroy-the-environment-to-save-it style as mentioned by Kitchenwitch. Come to think of it, Wales is the furthest I’ve been from home in quite a long time, being as it usually takes the promise of some rare seeds just to get me out of the garden these days. This time, however, it was a jaunt to help my old friend Digiveg put up his spanking new polytunnel.

Golygfa Hyfryd: “Beautiful View”

Digiveg and his wife Chickenlady recently used the Black Arts in order to fund their escape to Wales. Digi denies this, of course, explaining that keeping his old house on with tenants in it to pay the mortgage is nothing shady - a sort of reverse buy-to-let. I don’t know, sounds suspiciously like Accountancy to me. However he did it, the Digis decamped with indecent haste last autumn and are now quietly developing a two-acre smallholding in southwest Wales. Walking the Walk, in other words. So far vast areas of grass have been reclaimed for vegetables, whole flocks of battery chickens have been re-homed and the first of several lines of willow plantings have been, er, planted. Most telling of all a row of leylandii has been sacrificed to the Great God of Self-Sufficiency, which makes Digiveg an official Good Sort in my book.

A polytunnel goes up with slightly less fuss than an Amish barn-raising, and there’s no requirement to have either a beard or a bad attitude (although by the end of it Digiveg had both). There’s quite a bit of work and head-scratching involved though, so it was important that we got as much time as possible to put the thing up. Naturally, this meant that the world conspired against us. Unexpected visitors, children with tonsillitis, diary clashes, poorly grandparents; you name it, it was all thrown into the mix. It was with mingled fatigue and relief that we finally rolled onto Digi’s driveway, only to find that a horrific nail-clipping accident had forced Digi and ChickenLady to make a mercy dash to the duty vet in Pen Y Bun, and they wouldn’t be back for a while. Oh, and the frame wasn’t up, which was grounds for saying “Ah.”

From the beginning we knew we were up against it, and before long we were doing what Hedgewizards do; working on until it was too dark to see. We finally got the cover on the following day, a mere hour after Witchypoo and I were supposed to have left. There was a modicum of tension, and not just in the polythene film. By that time I’d had my bum in the holly hedge more times than I care to think about, Digiveg (normally the most laid back person on the planet) had been reduced to making Executive Decisions with more than a Whiff of Miff, and Witchypoo was brassed off by the whole thing. Chickenlady was… well… more buddhist than ever, dispensing sweetness and calm as a sort of spiritual counterweight to all the tetch going down in the garden. But the tunnel… was up!

Of polytunnels themselves, more another time. But if you’re contemplating a purchase just now, let me offer you a piece of advice; count all the bits when they arrive, read the instructions cover to cover at least twice, and have the frame up before your helpers arrive!

*It turns out they’re just as snippy as anyone else, but they apologize more for it afterwards.

Posted in polytunnel | 5 Comments »

05/04/2007 by admin.

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?

Posted in learning curve, polytunnel | 4 Comments »