Polytunnel Countdown Almost Complete!

With stillness in the air, we dashed to the allotment this morning in order to fit the polythene to the frame. The piece of polythene supplied to do the job looked tiny.
'That'll never fit,' I said, looking at the two foot by one foot oblong. I mean, I know I'm not hot on Maths, but even I could see we'd have to do a fair bit of stretching to get that to cover the huge edifice of a frame we have.
'We have to unfold it,' said Andy, and he got in the car and moved it waaaaaaaaaay down the other end of the allotment car park. 'To give us space!' he shouted.
'Ha!' I thought. 'What optimism. We could unfold that on a picnic table.'

Anyway, after much huffing and puffing and some fairly co-ordinated un-origami, we managed to lay the polythene out flat without ripping it to shreds on the gravel.
'Corr!!' I said. 'There's enough to cover a marquee!'

It was a HUGE piece of stuff. In fact, I'm glad our polytunnel is only 10'x12' because if it had been any bigger we'd have needed more people to help and possibly a whole day rather than a morning and then it would turn into a 'cover-the-polytunnel' party and people would want feeding and there would probably be wine and then people would get tipsy and the whole thing could have gone completely pear-shaped. (As opposed to polytunnel shaped.)

We had to make sure the writing on the polythene would end up on the inside of the tunnel because we bought 'anti-fog' polythene in order to minimise condensation and drippage. That wasn't a problem and soon the BIG MOMENT arrived.

'Right,' said Andy. 'What we need to do is haul the polythene over the top of the frame and then use battening to nail it to the tops of the doors. Then we use these, ' and he waved 4 feet bits of plastic coated metal at me,' to attach the polythene to the base frame, whack 'em with a mallet, then fold the edges tightly against the door frames and hammer a few nails in. What you need to know is that EVERYTHING has to be TIGHT.'

'Okay,' I said, remembering the first instruction, totally non-absorbing the rest and thinking, 'I'll pretend I know what I'm doing, like I did when I was teaching.'

The first problem occured because I am 5 foot 6 and Andy is 6 foot, and had a step ladder. And the tunnel is 8 foot high. Despite the fact I have the arm length of an orang-utan, I wasn't tall enough, even standing on tippy-toe to reach the apex of the frame. So, I had to hang onto my side whilst Andy pulled his side as far up as he could without making the whole thing slide to one side and then we had to perform a 'reach-as-far-as-we-can-towards-each-other-then-swap-quickly' movement so Andy could haul my side over too. It worked okay, once Andy realised my orang-utan arms don't actually concertina outwards from my body. We had a bit of a laugh and the polythene was laid to rest across the frame. A quick bit of frantic hammering secured it to both door frames. The anticipated hurricane that sod's law dictated would arrive at this precise moment did not happen - HURRAH!!

For the next two hours we battled on. Whacking and sliding and heaving and tugging, I became a human dead weight, swinging as hard as I could on the edges of the polythene to tighten it against the frame whilst Andy hammered in nails like his life depended on it. It was VERY HOT inside that tunnel. Like a jungle. Like a jungle in a heatwave in a desert.

But we did it! Andy got goosed by a raspberry bush as he squatted down to hammer the battening over the polythene at the bottom of the frame (the early crop raspberries are quite close to one end of the tunnel and may have to be moved once they've fruited this season). Andy lost about a stone in sweat. He swore a bit, too and had problems with a few bendy nails. Inside the tunnel, I continued to get very hot. Excess polythene was trimmed, base rail adjustments were made for improved fit et voila! Polythene on!

All that needs to be done now is to hang the doors. And dig the ground inside. And plant stuff. And weed. And visit the tunnel every day during the summer to open it up and water (did I mention how hot it was inside?) and close it up again.

Oh yes, we also had our first strawberry today. Should have taken a picture of it but we were so excited by the ripening of 'The First Strawberry of 2009', we ate it!

It was delicious!