[veggieman]

We also have a polytunnel and had to have it very strongly constructed due to the very high winds we can experience up here. It is cemented into the ground, using redundant salmon feed pipes to make the frame, with the structure really strengthened by masses of timber used to brace the structure inside. The guy who built it also put up an 8-foot high fence at either end of the tunnel and attched the tunnel to both fences with even more timber.

The tunnel up here is a massive bonus for me as it allows me to grow many things that I just can't grow outside due to the climate.

[JamPan]

A greenhouse wouldn't be in my budget for a good number of years, not to mention having no one to help me erect one.  I thought I might build a polytunnel until I costed it all out and realised it would cost almost as much as buying a greenhouse with the attendant risk of doing it wrong and spoiling the materials.  However, I found a polytunnel online 6.5' X 12' which I could have delivered for £70 and decided to take a risk on that.  I erected it almost singlehandedly (got a hand just to lift the top onto the bottom section) over 3 hours.  It's been well staked in, and so far has withstood some pretty blustery weather - not of Shetland standard, admittedly, and there will be much worse to come here too.

Some of the more established allotmenteers were very sceptical before they saw it, but several more have been ordered for the site since mine went up.  Next door allotment erected theirs last week.  Compare this to the £40 I spent on one of those little vinyl greenhouses that came apart several times when it got a bit breezy despite being lashed to two concrete posts and held down with guy ropes and extra tent pegs over the bottom rails!  That has now been dismantled and the frame is being used as staging inside the poly.  Time will tell, but it looks to have been a good investment, particularly when you consider it was that or nothing.