Planning the Tunnel Interior

Having read various articles, posts and books about polytunnels, I settled on emulating a simple idea that I had personally encountered in a lovely looking tunnel from (Permaculture Design Course tutor) Carole Egner’s project in Fife. One of our PDC weekends involved a site visit there, which generously included the permission to binge on all the copious amounts of the various salad leaves present on that early April weekend.

A surprisingly massive amount of cardboard was laid down to cover the entire 16ft x 35ft interior, and a pile of compost was to be dumped on top in narrow strips, with wood chip then spread onto the pathways in between.

But where could I find the fairly huge amount of compost needed for this? My options seemed to be extremely limited. The location of the garden away meant that all of the main Scotland based compost providers would not agree to deliver directly to the garden, and would have to use a courier service that apparently would have to dump it on the road a kilometre away. I also didn’t have access to a trailer for collecting a large amount of municipal compost, and in any case at this point there was no municipal compost available in either Blairgowrie or Dundee. My only option, which turned out to be a better one, was a chap who could personally deliver his “organic porcini mushroom compost” direct to the garden, and was based in Fife. It arrived all hot and steaming on an evening in late May.

As I needed to get going quickly, I decided to start using it immediately. Which would have normally been hugely inadvisable due to its intense heat from recent “cooking”. Ideally I would wait a few months for it to settle – but I didn’t have time for that!

So the compost was hastily wheelbarrowed in and lots of woodchip (from the Bamff woodchip pile) added to create attractive paths, plus an entrance area.

Also, makeshift furniture was constructed from discarded blue painted wood taken from an ex hostel. The entrance had to be a place to sit and relax as well as a place to sow and get seedlings going before planting.

A solar radio, an attractive clock, and a series of terracotta pots which had arrived in Scotland with us from our London garden some years earlier made it feel more complete and welcoming.

But the ground was entirely bare, so it was time to start growing something..