Even a girl can do it.....(Well, two, anyway...)

So Polytunnels, I've had a greenhouse before, but sadly, had to abandon it during a house move (it may to this day still be behind Taff's garage, I really don't remember).  At this point, with little space and less money, I wanted something different.  So I was wandering around the garden centre when I spotted this bijou poytunnel style growhouse that was big enough to stand up in and offered quite a large footprint.  Being a child of the information age, I immediately knicked off home to Google it.  As luck would have I found it for less than half the price on Garden Selections - http://www.selections.com/GF2091/garden-tunnel-1-9m-x-3m/.  They're getting mentioned in despatches because they sent it quickly and it's exactly the same as many I have seen for up to £100 odd  online and locally.

The instructions were a bit sparse but happily, more than adequate for erecting it.  I had asked my eldest to stay and help cos she's tall, but she wandered off somewhere as teenagers will, so that left me, (short) and my youngest (very short) holding, as it were, the baby.

It would be much, much funnier if the build had been a re-run of our camping holiday in North Devon last year, where the girls and I attempted to put up a 3 bedroomed, semi-detached, dome tent, on top of a cliff in a horizontal force 9 drizzle offensive.  Sadly for my blog, nothing could be further from the truth, nobody got yelled at, or grounded for the rest of their natural lives, I didn't end up on my knees weeping and nobody went home early because we were all getting pneumonia. So almost entirely completely unlike a family holiday in Berrynarbour.  More like a day on the beach in Barbados, or a walk in the Park.

So this is how it went:

Big Fish, Little Fish.......Cardboard Box

A new perspective on my beautiful young assistant!

It slots together just so

See?

Easier than a dome tent!

Just a bit of gentle stretching to chuck the cover over and viola!

The powder coated frame slots together with springy pins really easily and the cover was quite manageable even for us short folk.  In fact we went from getting it out of the box to planting in under an hour which I would say is pretty damn impressive.  It's quite sturdy and hasn't yet blown into next-doors garden despite the weather's spirited attempt to test it. The only downside is the chickens using it as an escape route (going over the top) but that's not the tunnels fault.

As for whether it does the job, well I'm impressed so far, for once seeds seem to be behaving exactly like it says on the packet, so for garden geeks I'll submit my records on a stand-alone-page when all the results are in.