Polytunnel revamp picture

Here is the result of my work these past few days dismantling the wooden-framed deep beds in the tunnel and reverting to just planting in the soil. I now have an area of about 10ft square bare soil. I will order some of the compost that the local council sell (apparently they supply Isle of Wight Tomatoes so it can't be bad). It is £35 per huge 700L bag and that should be enough to spread all over this area to give the soil a bit of a boost. I shall also disinfect the soil with Jeyes Fluid. I need to do this as the soil has been used for 3 seasons now, and I can't face digging it all out. It is also time to wash the tunnel plastic inside and out. This improves the light transmission a lot. I use the car wash brush on it's full extension. I get very wet doing it so I'll wait until the east winds have gone.

The instructions say to saturate the soil with a solution of Jeyes and water, leave 7 days, then turn it in. Then you can plant in it 14 days later. If I do this soon it'll be ok for planting in well before I actually need to.

I have spread all that I had left of last year's potting compost (I keep it in the green bin), and tomorrow I need to re-stock it. I also need to install the irrigation system using that motley collection of hoses and drip hoses.


I had a bad head today so my gardening efforts were confined to finger weeding two of the garden deep beds. I do this sitting down, and it was very pleasant in the sun. The garden is fairly sheltered from the wind so it wasn't too cold.

I was amazed when weeding the asparagus bed to find the spears showing already....! I won't be cutting them this year as these are crowns I raised from seed and they need another year to build up their root system before I can start harvesting them. I can wait! (You can see bulbs coming up in the bed too. The soil was from an old flower bed and these volunteers are still coming up. I don't have the heart to pull them out.)

I also finger weeded the strawberry bed. I'm hoping for a good crop from these this year. I will start the Rumtopf again with them. We are eating last years now and I must say it is all worth the work. If they are not finished by June I will bottle what is left so we can use the pot again.

Tomorrow I will be paying a visit to the garden centre in the hope of finding everything I need. I hate shopping and one trip will have to do.