Hi everyone,
I have been spending the last two afternoons at our school (yep I'm a Teaching Assistant) with group of children sorting out our new polytunnel. Luckily I was able to get the school and PTA to agree funding this year and ended up with a 3mx5m polytunnel, on the basis I needed enough space to get upto 12 children at a time in there with space to swing a cat!!!!
We have now begun to fill the raised beds (boy do they love getting muddy!), and finally this afternoon at our after school gardening club we have planted brocolli, pak choi, winter lettuce and (doomed to fail) some peas that are already 20cm+ tall (these are due to having attended an RHS course, showing depth of seed planting!!) Never one to throw any plants away, we are using them as an experiment to see how far they get, having been in my greenhouse for the last 3/4 weeks!!!
We have also started off some onion and garlic a couple of weeks ago which will be transplanted as soon as I have filled the next raised bed (5 in total), I'm also hoping to get some broad beans going next week. I'm undecided on sweet peas as whether there is any benefit rather than planting earlyish next year.
I'm hoping to be sowing earlier next year, as when I visited Rosemoor back in June their community polytunnel was packed with veg ready for harvesting, having been mostly sown Jan/Feb.
Fingers crossed to an earlier harvest for the school children