new poly tunnel

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jambop

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new poly tunnel
« on: November 03, 2016, 12:37 »
Hi I have just built up my new poly tunnel which is a bit like a frame tent :) I was wondering what is the best thing to do with the skirt around the bottom? They give a few tent peg type things to hold it down but is there a better way? I had thought about old wooden planks over the top of them to stop wind blowing around underneath...any advice welcome.

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sunshineband

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2016, 15:15 »
Our cover is buried in the ground all round, and the weight of the soil has kept it down alright. Tent pegs will not stand up to gales for sure! Have you also secured your frame with something like dogties or fence pins hammered in deep and then cabled-tied on?

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jambop

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2016, 16:02 »
Not really done anything yet other than build and put the cover on. I have made a couple of 3m x 600mm staging benches for it though. We get very little very high winds normally and it is in a sheltered spot so I thought about driving in some stakes at each corner and lashing the frame to them should hold it down? I am quite excited about using the tunnel. I am not going to use it for growing very much but it will be great for germinating seeds and thinning out and growing on prior to planting out that is going to be my main use for it. I for the past four years have used a 1.2m x 800mm cold frame for bringing all my seedlings on but housing thirty tomato plants plus god knows how many other peppers and other things after thinning out into 75mm pots is a jigsaw puzzle so a 4m x 3m tunnel should give me bags of space :)

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sunshineband

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2016, 09:48 »
The stake son the corners should work well but remember the kind of "lift" that the cover will provide even in modest winds and make sure there is no way it can blow away. the Velcro often supplied does not always do the job!

Another thing I thought about is wrapping hot spot tape around the frame will make the cover last longer and is well worth the extra few pounds imho

Yes, it is exciting. We are planning  a new larger one, and I am really looking forward to it!! Lots of lessons learned from using our little one and from watching what worked/didn't work for others too, so I hope it is all good for you jambop!

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3759allen

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2016, 07:34 »
bury the sides, the provides a hell of a lot of weight to hold it down with little pressure on the plastic. ideally make sure there's no sharp stones that will push on the plastic.

you also may want to think about ventilation and through wind as they can get crazy hot in there.

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jambop

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2016, 17:52 »
Ok so what I have done is driven stakes into the ground and then drilled and bolted them together so hopefully that should take care of the structure the plastic apron has been covered with soil to steady the sail so hopefully that whole shebang should stay put :) There are little windows in the sides so there is some through draft though in high summer the door will be open tp keep anything in there cool but it is going to be mainly a spring and autumn operation.

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ghost61

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2016, 18:28 »
We always remove the covers on our tunnels for the winter.  We are on a windy site, and many have ended up in the nearby dyke or even neighbouring gardens even if they are fairly well secured.  Frost eats through the plastic too so the cover becomes full of holes.  As we don't grow anything overwinter, better safe than sorry.

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AlaninCarlisle

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2016, 20:01 »
Mine is quite a bit larger ar about 10M x 4M. It's now in its fifth year and is fine apart from a couple of small splits that I repaired with proprietary mending tape. The skirt was buried in a 30cm deep trench all the way round. It's main benefits include a very early strawberry crop, very early regular veggies, reliable butternut squash and sweetcorn crops and a rampant grapevine.
I've tried growing tomatoes in it but prefer to grow them in the greenhouse. They seem much easier to keep in a cordon form for some reason. They seem to run wild in the polytunnel

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jambop

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Re: new poly tunnel
« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2016, 08:51 »
The weather conditions we get are not too bad. From time to time we get a frost and a bit of wind but not too strong... buckets of rain in the winter time but the most extreme I think will be the summer sun. This was a very cheap poly tunnel at only €120 but it is only for germinating my veg seeds and then growing them on a bit prior to planting out so I think it will do OK . A new cover is €70 but I think I will get a couple of years out of the original .



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