Why Should You Buy A Polytunnel For Your Veg Garden?

Why Should You Buy A Polytunnel For Your Veg Garden?

Lots of veg growers already have a greenhouse in their plot, so why would you want to add a garden polytunnel to your garden?

Well, cost for a start – for the price of a small greenhouse, you can get yourself a polytunnel five times the size! Just think how many more crops you could fit in!

Polytunnels are also very lightweight and with a bit of help, can be moved to a new part of your garden each year to fit in with your crop rotation. Much easier than trying to replace the soil inside a greenhouse to avoid breeding disease!

It’s possible to keep a polytunnel at a much more consistent temperature than a greenhouse – it’s relatively easy to keep it at Mediterranean temperatures and this massively expands the range of produce you can grow. It also means that growing tomatoes and peppers is simple and your yields will be far higher – you can even keep salad growing right through the winter!

A polytunnel’s plastic cover diffuses light coming through, so this helps reduce plants being shaded out or being scorched by direct sunlight. You can keep frost away altogether from your polytunnel by using bubble-wrap to insulate it. This hugely increases the growing season and means you can experiment with exotic fruit and vegetables which would never survive outdoors. It’s possible to grow everything from grape vines to melons with a bit of preparation!

A polytunnel will help keep pests away and protect your precious crops from wind and rain damage – it also reduces pests and attack by mildew. They are easy to ventilate, so you can get the perfect growing conditions whatever the weather outside.

A polytunnel is incredibly simple to put together and can be installed easily on even rough, uneven and even sloping ground with the minimum of fuss.


Some polytunnel growing tips:

• Sow little and often with salad crops to get a constant supply

• Make sure you leave extra room between your plants as they will grow larger than usual

• Wash the outside of the tunnel at the start of the season to keep light levels up

• Use a liquid feed to keep your hungry plants in top condition

• Use a net to support large fruit on vines etc to avoid damage to them

• Try to keep children and pets off your polytunnel to avoid damage!