Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Growing in Greenhouses & Polytunnels => Topic started by: shokkyy on October 02, 2012, 21:58
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I'm trying to plan out ways of giving the plants in my tunnel as much protection as possible through the winter. Last winter I didn't find that using fleece was making any real difference. I had a max/min thermometer inside the fleece and the temps were no different to outside. Maybe I need to find a greater weight of fleece, but I was also wondering about using some bubblewrap to improve insulation.
Anyone use this in their tunnel? Does it need to be a continuous layer of protection? I recall seeing one of Bunty's videos where she had bubblewrap in her tunnel just hanging in sheets. Presumably that works on a principle of disrupting the airflow or something. Anybody know about this?
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It may have been to section off the poly tunnel to create a better insulated area.
This works well in greenhouses ans saves the cold ait rushing in with you when you open the door, as you can close the door before lifting fighting your way through the bubble plastic
You would still need to insulate over the roof though, as this is where the majority of the heat is lost from.
Creating an insulated section within your tunnel, plus fleece over plants might help. If however the site is very windy, it might not be enough to prevent things freezing in really cold conditions
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I used fleece in the spring over my newly started veg, I didn't measure any temperatures but the plants under fleece did seem to be protected. I also use cheap mini greenhouses inside one tunnel (and also add a layer of fleece over those if it is very cold), this seems to be enough to protect even the most tender things. :)
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My local GC sells bubblewrap in rolls of 30M, width of 0.75M, or they sell it loose by the metre, width of 1.5M. When I checked it out at the weekend, they had two sorts available by the metre. One is the normal small bubblewrap that tends to be used for packaging, but they also had some which was a much bigger bubble. The bigger stuff did look stronger, but is there any particular advantage of big bubbles over small? It just seems that if they stock those two sorts there must be a worthwhile difference in functionality or something. Anybody know?
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I think the big bubbles let in more light