Polytunnel and raised beds

After a few months lurking around on the net and inspired by some threads on this forum I started setting up a vegetable garden on my property. I used to have an allotment with my girlfriend and friends but since we moved to a property with some land I gave up the allotment and started finally this year on our own property.

To not hi-jack Steve-R's thread I'll post the progress now and then in this thread.

Today I continued setting up the polytunnel. Initially I was planning to tighten the cover with sail rings but this was really a pain the ass, so we went to the hardware store and bought some wood and fixings to tighten the cover with wood at the base. When it was all tight up the polytunnel became really strong and almost no movement is there anymore. After that we put some ground cover in there which we tacked to the wooden base.

Tommorow we are going to plant our seedlings and go to a biologic seedling farm where we are going to buy some more plants.

Here it is without the wooden base. The raised beds outside will be used for beans, lettuce, colliflower, broccoli etc.. In the greenhouse we want to grow different varieties of tomatoes, aubergines, melons and peppers.


After that we fixed the base



And the result was a lot tighter:

Then we secured the ground cover and put in 6 2m*0.5m wooden raised beds:


At the end at the closed side there will come a rack for potting and my cacti collection.

I'm pleased with the result so far and looking forward to plant tommorow.

 

what about a update.

 

Small update about the survival of my tunnel. The polytunnel survived the winter without any problems with some very powerful storms.It didn't gave a kick in winds. This is how I secured the frame (I posted this elsewhere too):



The cover is as expected full of small holes now. I picked up some 200 micron UV anti condense cover which according to specs could hold up to 8 years. I will again be fixed on the base as this proved to be very solid (and saves me from some digging .

Tip of the day: buy good quality cover from the start and don't bother with the green fish-net plastic.

Unfortunately I lost a lot of photos including the progress of my garden. I had quite a good harvest from most of the plants, except for the potatoes which I experimented with in buckets.

This is how it looked like planted last spring:



Once the new cover is on I'll try to keep this thread a bit more updated this season.

 

All neat and tidy, I can't get my body to function as it did to get in the garden yet.
I have a green cover and it passed the wind test, previously it had been ripped off and I hand stitched it together.
I bought a second cover for £20 which I have in reserve, I also have a gazebo up since last year which is well tied down.