Leaps and Bounds
We haven’t written to you folks in a while and there is a very good reason for that: we’ve been madly busy with incoming website orders and general tending to our ever expanding crop of gorgeous chilli plants but most of all a very exciting delivery arrived a few weeks ago, namely… our two brand spanking new polytunnels!!
The delivery of course happened on the rainiest day of the year by far so we had to act quickly as the pallet was slowly sinking into the muddy ground, and move each component of the tunnels by hand to a safer location. As with the order of our first polytunnel, First Tunnels had done a fantastic job at packaging everything very well, with clearly numbered labels that were crucial in the building process that followed.
The weather gods were of course not with us so it was a couple of weeks before we could envisage marking our land with the all-important measures and making final decisions at to the exact location of the tunnel. So rather than stay put and twiddle our thumbs we decided to take extra care of our little plants which are actually not so little anymore and rather showing great promise. The ones that were in our “chilli prison” (see former blog post) have been allowed to go outside for a few hours every day to see how they coped with the change of temperature but were of course all nice and cozy back inside during the night as the temperatures are still fairly cold, averaging 6 degrees. Our plants in the tunnel are taller as they were the first ones to be started off and don’t need any heating anymore but rather enjoying the warmth the sunlight now brings in the tunnel.
The delay with building the new polytunnels have allowed us to really shop around for wholesale pots, soil and fabric to isolate the various species at the height of summer and although we are still not entirely sorted out when it comes to the soil we have found great deals when it comes to containers and cloth.
The weather being a tad more merciful in the past few days it was all hands on deck to start building what will hopefully be a good home to our 700 chilli plants (plus a few tomato plants, garden herbs and of course strawberries!!!). We decided to start with the smaller one of the two polytunnels to reacquaint ourselves with the technique needed and after a bit of trial and error the frame was quickly mounted and the plastic sheeting secured over it. Instead of a hard wood floor we decided this time to use a dark plastic fabric that when looked at a bit closer is full of tiny holes in order to facilitate drainage and avoid rotting the roots of our plants by allowing water to stagnate. Upon completion a bottle of bubbly was opened (any excuse, we know…) to celebrate such an achievement and maybe also to give us a bit of Dutch courage for the build of the second polytunnel… The cork was subsequently nailed to the front door, a tradition that we mean to keep up when we have a 30+ polytunnels chilli farm (well… that’s the dream so don’t burst our bubble just yet!).
The second polytunnel build was started shortly after the first as we didn’t want to lose momentum but although the members of the Bountiful Seeds’ team would consider themselves to be of average “fitness”, our workers soon felt the weight (literally!) of having to carry the various elements to the site and kneeling down for a few hours in a row in order to adjust the 40 ft long main frame and then the plastic cover. But despite a few downpours of rain (and a particularly windy day when we decided to put the cover on of course) the spirits remained high and the extent of our folly courageous endeavor soon became apparent.
Once again a cork had to be nailed to the front door so what better way than to open another bottle of bubbly and discuss small matters of layout, watering and plant care that are going to be the next phase of our plantation. For now the biggest job is to transfer all of our chilli plants into their final 8-12l pots so we can see them prosper into wonderful producers of spicy and tasty chilli pods!
One huge decision still needs to be made though, i.e choosing a name for each of the polytunnels. Indeed, rather than call them pol1, pol2 and pol3 we thought it would be more auspicious to name them after Gods of Fertility so after a bit of searching we have come up with a few possibilities. Should we ask for your opinion and have you choose for us?
Chilli Growing........ 