My polytunnel for mostly chillies

Hi,

My previous experience of growing under cover is with a greenhouse but I've just bought my polytunnel to expand a bit. It's a reasonable size (18' by 32') so I hope to get good use out of it. The plan is to devote a reasonable space for chillies - not only do we use a lot in cooking ourselves but a friend owns a farm shop so I might be able to get a stand there and sell off any excess - maybe recoup some of the runningcosts.

The planned site needs a bit of digger work before I can get it up so I have some scope in getting the foundations right.

I'm thinking of keeping the slight incline of the site as this might be better for dranage. Do people with that size of polytunnel have any issues with excess water running of the top during wet weather? I live in Northern Ireland so rain is not unknown
If so, I could maybe put a drainage pipe in at ground level though as thesite is very rocky it might be tricky.

Happy to hear your thoughts - thanks

 

One inch of rain, on 18' x 32', is 1,400 litres ... so not insignificant and it might be worth capturing to then use for irrigation? I've seen various Heath Robinson gutters for polytunnels, and I think there is a thread on here with Photos (so might be worth a search), or have a slope as you suggest and some sort of ground-level gutter / ditch / trench that will just encourage some/most of the rain water to one end where you can harvest it, or divert it away.

 

Irrigation shouldn't really be a problem - I plan to bring a hosepipe (burried) to either just outside or just inside thepolytunnel (happy to take advice which is better on this). As I'll have a digger in this can be done quite easily and I don't have a water meter so there's no recurring cost . This part of the country doesn't ever have a hosepipe ban or anything like that - our water related problems tend to be just the opposite - getting rid of the stuff! - though I appreciate the benefits of "rainwater".

 

Inside is perhaps slightly less at risk from freezing in winter? If you will also want to water outside then I would have the tap outside - snaking a hose about the place tends to knock adjacent plants, and more so inside the tunnel, so a tap inside, then used to water things outside, is probably the least best alternative.

Inside the house makes it easier to hook-up an automated irrigation system, should that be required in the future.

If you are going to water outside too then perhaps consider a pair of taps, inside and outside.

Over here most (all?) of the water companies don't allow hoses to be used, other than for hand watering, for customers on Water Rates - folk have to get a meter (or perhaps a Licence, although I think that has been replaced with "get a meter"!)

 

Polytunnel has arrived - impressive tubing thickness. I'll post some pictures when I get it up.

 

Thanks - I had looked through that thread before - I hope mine turns out half as good.

 

The poly-tunnel has arrived but still in bits.

 

And here is the site. I needed to get a large digger in but I think a good job was done.

 

Thanks - I welded the strips of plate metal to the bottom of the 10 ground tubes to add a bit of extra strength for gripping the concrete.

 

More ground work done. The base pipes are now embedded in concrete - so this shouldn't blow away ... Managed to get a water pipe buried and coming into the tunnel just on the inside.

 

Nice one, hope they're in square

 

Cheating when attaching the hoops - standing on a trailer makes it much easier

 

Adding the crop bars.

It was a lovely day here on Friday.