Sunday Blurty Sunday

That was not the original title of the blog I was writing today but the original blog which took me an hour at least to write only to have the usual sunday glitch fest forcing me to try a restart in case it was my computer glitching then finding the 'saved draft' function had also failed hence my finished blog was gone with the wind.

Maybe it's a sign that my blurt was crap and I should rethink it? It wasn't even one of my in depth medical fallacy blogs or an anti-political rant. Just a nice gardening journal-type post about the most monumental upgrade to my gardening life to date.

I HAVE A POLYTUNNEL!!!

I've been saving up since 2018 for one after doing my organic horticultural course and learning where I'd been going wrong all these years with my feeble attempts at growing some stuff I can eat.

I have 1/3 of an acre and have been told I 'wasted me money' as this is just a field full of rocks. (Landfill they call it round here). But I've never been one to give up especially when someone tells me I should.

I had my stash of money burning a hole in my teapot and could barely afford a 12ftx20ft by my reckoning so when I was sent an ad for a polycarbonate tunnel for 600 euro I snapped it up. That was about half the price of others I'd looked at out of my price range. I didn't even THINK any of those negative thoughts I'm always told to. No I went with the 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' philosophy.

I ended up having to pay another 100 to actually get it delivered thanx to the old petrol hikes but after asking around even that was a bargain. So now I had a giant meccano set in my garden.

Not only that but the instructions were postcard sized and in Lithuanian. I was lulled by the dulcet tones of a Russian sounding accent assuring me it was easy as pie to erect plus I have all my experience of Ikea and other flat-packed furniture learning curves.

My friend Con said he knew a Lithuanian who was good with his hands so we set a date to get cracking. In the meantime I started with the bits I knew I could do myself using my extensive picture framing qualifications. I put together the end bits with the doors and bits n bobs, cutting out the shaped bits of polycarbonate and fixing them on. The scariest part of that was untaping the giant roll then not taking off like a kite with a giant plastic parachute and then cutting it out right to get all the pieces out of one sheet. yeh I made the first cut wrong but made up for it with a bit of manoevering by the skin of my nose.

Finally the day came to get it up and Con and the Lithuanian (Leo) turned up on Paddy's Day to help. (Bless em). The day however did not go quite to plan. It turned out the instructions were in Bulgarian not Lithuanian. Also Leo insisted we needed to prep the area thoroughly first which meant de-rocking and levelling. We gave it a shot but it was beyond our skills and strength so I made the decision to hire in a man with a digger and we enjoyed the rest of the day down at the pub.

Going to the pub was no waste of time either as that is the place to find local help like men with diggers and that is where we found one.

2 weeks later Mr Diggerman arrives at 7am and leaves. I wake up after sleeping in to find a lonely digger in my garden with no sign of a driver. Hmmm had he tried to wake me up and given up? Well no he turned up again the next day and I awoke to the sound of his engine.

I explained to him that I needed an area levelled and that the mound in front of him seemed to be a pile of old field clippings and stuff which I thought would be well composted soil underneath and we could use that. It turned out to be a mountain of giant rocks. Oops. So not to be put off as I had him he would rally forth and try and get as much soil out of it as he could and level enough to put the polytunnel on. It was tough going as the digger was not equipped for such weighty boulders but he got the minimum done plus dug four corner holes and two middle ones (which was where I guessed the extra legs went.

So now we were all set, no more excuses and the day after April fools was to be the day. The weatherman had predicted 80% rainfall but we got more like 90% sunshine.
Leo didn't make it this time as he was ill so just me and Con were up to the task.
With no real instructions just a few pictures to go by I decided to build the middle of the frame first so no risk of half finished tunnel being blown away and we could then see if the holes were in the right place.

Turns out the holes weren't in the right place. The corners were fine but 2 in the middle had to be turned into 4 either side of middle. So we botched a few holes as best we could and then fitted the legs on the bottom and piled some rocks on top and around (yes I'll be adding some cement but not yet).
Next we fitted on my pre-prepared ends which was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. It was all going so well.

Excuse the mess, that there is my temporary compost bin made out of an old bed base. It's not pretty but it's doing the job for now.

The next bit was going to be the most fun but also scary, getting the huge sheets of polycarbonate on. All this time I'm thinking it's all going so well, what can possibly go wrong?
Well actually it did go well and no nothing went wrong. Couple of glitches like one of the legs wouldn't go into the hole (rock) so I gave up on that one, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. The corner ones were all good and deep. We thought we were one nut short too so were gonna leave that for another day but the final nut turned up later so all good.
Tadaaaaaaahhhh

Bet you thought it was all gonna go horribly wrong huh? No, it's up and I am one happy bunny. Now just hold off with the westerly hurricanes till I get that cement down please.