There are greenhouses and there are polytunnels . . . but the latter can be tricky to put up, as Michael Kelly discovered.
It's ugly, our new polytunnel. And yet it's also an object of great beauty. For out of it will come - shortly, we hope - potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and, with luck, some Mediterranean fare: basil, aubergines, watermelons and the like. Polytunnels are often called poor men's greenhouses, but I like to think of them as good value rather than cheap. Ours is five metres (15ft) wide and 10 metres (30ft) long and cost about €600. A greenhouse of those dimensions could cost €6,000.
So I like to think of the polytunnel as a workhorse and a greenhouse as a show pony. If you want an abundance of vegetables and fruit for the table in difficult Irish weather, get a polytunnel. If you want your garden to be considered for a gong at Chelsea Flower Show . . . don't.
We got the tunnel for a few reasons, but mainly because our soil is seriously wet. As a result our vegetable plot was usable only in high summer. It gave us a bountiful crop last year but then stood abandoned, untidy and boggy for the better part of seven months. We reckon the tunnel will extend the growing season as well as allowing us to produce some slightly exotic fare. We had a serious problem with slugs last year; our many unpleasant night-time expeditions with bucket and torch convinced us that the vegetables needed a drier environment. The tunnel now stands pretty much where our vegetable plot was; as this is down in a corner of our garden, it's not too much of an eyesore.
We bought our tunnel from Simon Cummins in Wexford. He delivered it himself, and although he chatted amiably about tunnels in general he didn't seem to be making any moves to erect ours. I eventually discovered, with some concern, that putting it up wasn't part of the deal. It basically comes in a kit that includes the frames and plastic. The day it was delivered I laid the aluminium frames out on the ground, about where they were going to go, and, satisfied, headed back inside for dinner. They lay there patiently for a week or two before I got around to doing anything with them. I would see them when I opened the curtains in the bedroom each morning, and sometimes I would just close the curtains again, so I wouldn't have to look at them.
The tunnel guy had given me a kind word or two of advice and left a suspiciously short page of instructions, but I was confident I could erect the thing. Mrs Kelly knows me well, however - and her mother, who has a polytunnel already, knows life's realities - so on the QT she organised for some reinforcements to be sent down to help.
Her sister, her brother and his wife duly arrived, and we got started. Her brother in particular seemed to know what he was doing. He got stuck into a complicated-looking procedure that involved running builder's line around four pegs that marked out the corners. He and Mrs Kelly discussed at length the application of Pythagoras' theorem to the problem of ensuring the frames were square. I tried to nod in all the right places and look interested. (I didn't believe my maths teacher when he tried to convince us that theorems would come in useful in later life.) I kept to myself the fact that my plan, had I been left to my own devices, mainly involved "digging".
Next we drove aluminium tubes into the ground along the boundary (five on each side). The U-shaped frames around which the plastic is going to be stretched are fitted into the tubes (that sentence is easy to write but took a bit of huffing and puffing in reality). We then dug a trench along each side - essentially, you bury the plastic in them, one on each side of the tunnel. We probably should have waited for a warmer, less windy day to do the work with the plastic. It comes in one huge sheet, and it took a lot of effort to position it over the frames and bury it in the trenches on each side. At one stage a gust of wind nearly took the whole sheet into a neighbouring field. It was like struggling with an enormous errant kite. The key with the plastic is to pull it rigidly tight over the frames. Otherwise the wind will catch it (which would be very, very noisy) and water will collect on it. When we were finished, one side in particular looked kind of saggy.
The father-in-law arrived later that evening for a look, and he insisted we dig that side out and start again. He was right, as we got it much better the second time (and he helped, so we couldn't complain). We leaned on our shovels, admiring our handiwork. It was like Amish getting together to build a house in a day. I felt the warm glow of community, of shared effort. Or that might have been the Deep Heat I put on my back to ease the pain from digging.
The next day I dug out a path down the centre of the tunnel, about half a metre deep. Initially you couldn't stand up straight in the tunnel, but now, with the path, you can, which makes life more comfortable. It wasn't comfortable digging, though. Even at this time of the year it's like a sauna in there when the sun shines. It's a tropical kind of humidity that warms the bones the moment you enter. (You can imagine how it will be in the summer.) Someone once told me that they hung a clothes line in the tunnel in the winter, to dry their washing. Now that's resourceful.
The lowered path leaves you, in effect, with a raised bed on each side. The path took me most of a day to dig: 10 metres long by half a metre deep is 60 cubic tonnes of soil (or something like that) to remove by wheelbarrow. Now when Mrs Kelly says "You never do any work in the tunnel" I can say: "I never do any work? Do you not remember how I lost half a stone digging out the path?"
Design flaw number one: I actually dug out too much soil, and the path was below the water table. So when the first really wet day came the path looked like a narrow swimming pool. I got in 40 lengths while I was thinking about how to remedy it. Next up were the doors. Tunnel guy doesn't supply doors or door frames; he assumes that as you're up for erecting the tunnel you won't mind knocking together a few. The last time I went to the local DIY store for wood it was for my much-maligned hen house. When the owner saw me coming this time he praised God and shouted something to his wife in the back about how they would "eat well tonight". I bought lengths of two-by-four for the door frames, waterproof plywood for the half-doors, and hinges and bolts. I bought more lengths of two-by-four to lay along each side of the path, to keep the soil in the beds from falling out. Mostly I'm just telling you that so I could write two-by-four again. Once I had the frames in place I got the door up in no time with my favourite tool: the electric screwdriver. It's the only tool on God's earth that can make a DIY novice like me feel like Handy Andy.
At the moment only spuds and onions are growing visibly in the tunnel. But they provide enough greenery to let the onlooker know that serious food production is going on.
The potatoes were in the ground before the tunnel arrived, but they are thriving now. We have also planted tomatoes, basil, lettuce, scallions, spinach, aubergines and cucumbers. We are watching eagerly for signs of life. Because of the heat in the tunnel, it needs daily watering. Design flaw number two: we didn't place it near a tap. Our garden hose doesn't stretch far enough, so until I put an outside tap near the polytunnel we are reduced to going up and down the garden with the watering can. But who cares? These are labours of love. And while we dig and weed and water we dream of the lushness of summer. When our tunnel will be crowded with green leaves, plump vegetables, aromatic herbs and fleshy fruits.
You can contact Michael Kelly by e-mailing mick.kelly@ireland.com