Returning to the Tunnel House

This year I thought I'd try to repeat and build on the success of last year's vege garden.  I did want to include the tunnel house.  It was something we've discussed over and over.  Ideas, disagreements and all sorts of plans have been made and discarded. I decided to just do what I wanted, sometimes, it's better to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

I cut open the back of the tunnel house, partly to make it a natural extension of the vege garden and because I couldn't be bothered walking around to the door through all the long grass.  I know myself well enough to know that it's something that I'd avoid doing and everything I tried to do in there would fail because I don't like slogging my way around to the door.  To be fair, the tunnel house is a bit broken anyway.  The nasty wind storm a few years ago blew the plastic sheet off the netting, weather has taken some of the plastic sheeting off the roof.  The roof support structure was badly made and needs some work. And there were two plum trees growing in there.  There is also the family of blackbirds that return every year to nest in a hole in the wall where a speaker used to be.

A few years ago, I put some chooks in there.  They were some end of lays and injured birds from the egg farm I worked in.  It was a good, gentle place to get them used to being out of a cage and learning how to free range.  Until a family of ferrets visited.

The soil in there had originally been a mix of a bought bio-blend, pig manure and our crappy sour grey soil.  After the chooks, it was a strange pale brown, with sawdust and rat droppings.  A while back, Dad thought he'd help us out sieving the soil.  Until I looked at the stones he was sieving out with his bare hands and pointed out that it was at least half rat poo.  The stones that were in there originally were similar size.

I spent many hours weeding the end where I'd cut the door then sieving the soil to put into the tyres.  I put the stones around to form a path and hopefully keep the weeds down.

I planted as I filled the tyres.  Cucumbers, rock melon, tomatoes, capsicums and chillies.  

I've spent so much time in there, the garden hasn't gotten much attention and is still mostly a jungle of waist high grass and thistle.  The down side to doing so much work on the soil is that the weeds grow very well too when not constantly being removed.

Even half done, the tunnel house has been a triumph so far.  I've grown the best green cucumbers I've ever tasted, my tomatoes are starting to ripen and I've grown the biggest capsicums I've ever managed. They're still green, my research says that if I want sweet red ones, I need to wait until they turn red on the plant before I pick them.

I live in the hope that I'll keep working on the garden around the tunnel house and gradually get it back.

Growing Tomato Plants From Lateral Cuttings

Years ago, someone told me to put my laterals into soil. Just pinch them off as you do and put them directly into the soil and they'll grow.  I tried it and while I got some small plants, life happened and I didn't look after them very well. 

Every year I try to do it, but never really pay enough attention to them.  I'm quite terrible really, I start off with the best of intentions and lose my motivation to do more than water them and pick the tomatoes.  I think there's also a fear of doing something wrong, I never trust myself to actually know what I'm doing.

This year, I decided to really go hard on the tomatoes.  I wanted to grow a lot of tomatoes and determined to look after them properly. The best place to do this is in the tunnel house.

After a fair bit of work, taming the tunnel house, I planted out my tomatoes.  They are all in tyres, filled with a mix of sieved soil, chicken manure and tomato mix.  With some lawn clippings and sawdust as mulch on top to keep the moisture in and the weeds down.

I gradually bought tomatoes and planted them out as I cleared and filled each tyre.  I have Brandywine Pink, Black Krim, Russian Reds and my all time preference, Beefsteaks.  There are also two varieties of cucumbers, a rock melon, an eggplant, two chillies and several red capsicums.

They mostly have strings from the roof to grow up and each day as I water, I've been true to my intentions.  I give them a twist on the string, I pick off laterals and make sure the roots are still covered. 

One of the capsicum plants got broken off (or eaten by something) just above the two first leaves that each plant gets.  It's still alive, it just hasn't done anything more.  So I stuck a lateral I'd just pinched off into that tyre.

I've been hearing from people with all the urban wisdom that laterals might grow but they don't fruit.  This one is now six foot tall and bearing fruit.

So now, I have pots for my healthy laterals to go into.  They are almost all rooting well and several have flowered and are now growing small green tomatoes.

My plan is to see if I can keep the tunnel house growing tomatoes throughout winter.  If I can have a year round supply, it will save a lot of money - we eat a lot of tomatoes.