This past weekend the temps hit just about 70 degrees for the first time this year. Being the middle of March though, it was more a dry run than the actual arrival of spring. As I look at the extended forecast out toward this weekend, the temps will be dipping down well below the freezing mark once again.
It did serve as a reminder that spring is on it’s way and we need to start getting ready! Over at my friends garden we’ve been repairing last years draft one green house. Well.. I saw ‘we’ but really he has done a great job expanding on lessons learned last year. He’s beefed up the frame of the green house and rebuilt the end walls and doors. All I’ve done it apply a little duct tape and help drag the plastic back over the top!
Last year, once the tunnel was up we started out seedlings and things were going great. As is often the case here in New Hampshire though one day, out of the blue, the temps went from from 60s to 85 and we didn’t have a great way to vent the tunnel, beyond opening the doors. The temps in the tunnel went up to at least 120 degrees before we realized it and we ended up burning more than a few less hardy seedlings. Lesson learned. We quickly setup a way to be able to roll the sides of the tunnel up and help get some excess heat out.
The tunnel there is a standard PVC pipe affair with plastic over top and some cheap lumber to frame the front and back allowing for doors and a place to staple the plastic to. It was cheap to build and quite effective at holding in heat. It worked great getting the season started and extending it out a little longer into the fall.
This year, with me in my new house, I plan to build a tunnel of my own.. with an eye toward laziness though. While the tunnel we built last year requires you to roll the sides up and down depending on the weather, a few web searches turned up a heat actuated hinge that will do that automatically. They are called ‘Vent Openers‘. It will force me to build my tunnel from a more rigid material, in this case 2x4s, instead of the cheaper PVC tubing. It will save me having to remember to open and close the tunnel each day and it should allow me to hang some plants from the tunnel rafters. I’m not sure what yet…
I’ve not figured out a lot of the details for my tunnel yet but I know it will have standard vertical sides and a peaked roof. I need to figure out how large I want it to be this year. I have a place all picked out for it, the dirt filled former in-ground swimming pool, but I need to sort out the cost of building the tunnel and how much I can/want to afford this year.
The ground under the tunnel needs to be worked as well before it goes up. It’s a bit of a hump right now and I need to at least level it if not lower it a little bit. The tunnel will be filled with raised beds but I’d like to at least put them down on flat ground… lest they be raised rocking-beds. I don’t know what the former owner used to fill the pool in so I’d like to dig down a little to make sure nothing too horrible in there. My plants won’t be reaching down into it of course but.. what can I say.. I’m curious!
Top priority for this week though is to order seeds, trees and bushes! I don’t know why I’ve been putting it off so long…
Robert