Gardening under plastic

 I love this indoor gardening malarkey!! I wish I had taken the plunge and got this polytunnel last year instead of being indecisive about it for twelve months or so. Even when I now arise to a wet and miserable day, I know that I can go and get on with something in the polytunnel (listening to the rain on the plastic is great...but watching it out of the open door is even better) until the weather improves enough to move outside, or vice versa... work outside if it's nice, and move inside if the weather goes a bit downhill.
 Anyway, here is a quick catchup on what's exciting me in there already...

 It's got pretty crowded in there quite quickly. The left hand bed is already full of seeds and plants, and the right hand one is just plant storage at the moment.  It has been a huge help having all the extra storage space for the plants in the tunnel, as my little old greenhouse was nowhere near big enough for everything I want to grow this year!

 Pretty boring I know.... but how excited was I when my first seedlings came up in the polytunnel!! These particular ones are Rocket, but i've also got Radish and mixed Lettuce leaves coming up aswell.

 I've also put my Lettuce little gem plants in the polytunnel bed to give me some early crops from an early sowing(they probably won't make it to maturity as i'll no doubt start nicking leaves off them as soon as they are big enough)

 The polytunnel is coming in handy for propagating space too. This is an Iris that I have just divided into three and am now growing on before putting them into the garden in a month or so. I've started potting up a few other plants too.. Kniphofia's, Zantedeschia's, Peonies and one or two Alliums, so I should have a nice selection of plants to put in my couple of flower borders in the veg garden soon.

 These are my pesandor shallots that i'm growing for the village show.... we will win some firsts this year!! (hopefully more than last year anyway :)

 Some summer purple broccoli waiting to go in the ground. I think I shall put half of these inside the tunnel, and the other half in the garden and see what difference it makes to the crop.



 So all in all it's going quite well I reckon. The planted crops in the left hand bed so far are Peas, Carrots, Radish, Rocket, Beetroot (Sarah planted these and was most impressed with the little cluster seeds), Lettuce leaves, Spring onions, Lettuce little gem and Early greyhound cabbage. It's amazing how well everything is growing in there already, the plants are all romping away in their new surroundings. The right hand bed will hopefully get attacked this weekend if I can rehome some of the plants in pots (maybe that second polytunnel will need to be here sooner than I thought). I still have a few other jobs to do (don't I always have "a few jobs" to do) like finishing the paving down the centre, attaching all the crop growing wires for the taller plants, making some opening windows for the mesh doors, plumbing in the mains water supply and putting my gravel bed in at the far end, but none of this is desperate so it can be done during the next wet weather spell I guess. :) I can now just enjoy my gardening inside and outside of my new polytunnel (Sarah would probably already call it my new home :)