How to Grow Organic Food in Polytunnels
Polytunnels are more affordable (around £100) than greenhouses (and these ones are opaque, so can prevent bird strike, as they won’t see the vegetation inside). Choose ones with secure doors and roll-up alternative doors for wheelbarrows. Biodegradable paper mulch is designed for polytunnels.
Read How to Grow Food in Your Polytunnel to learn how to grow crops all year round (including during England’s hungry gap, when not much can be harvested). You’ll learn how to reap sweet potatoes and celery in November, radish and baby carrots in February, and salad leaves year-round!
No-dig gardener Charles Dowding has a post on how to choose and use a polytunnel. He recommends burying the polythene all around in a trenches of one spade’s depth to prevent animals, weeds and draughts creeping in! Charles also has ha YouTube playlist on polytunnels and greenhouses.
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers and fruit trees are not safe). Also avoid netting to protect food (just leave some for wildlife!)
How to Store Your Own Garden Produce
How to Store Your Garden Produce is an updated version of a classic book, to show that anyone with even half an acre of land can feed a family of four for an entire year. Most gardens produce harvests in spring and summer, so this book shows how to avoid the rest of your harvest spoiling (of course you can donate the rest to others if wished).
This simple A to Z guide shows how to dehydrate, freeze, ferment and pickle your produce, plus there are recipes like strawberry wine, peach chutney, mushroom ketchup and celeriac soup. Also read the author’s book he wrote with his daughter: The Vegan Cook and Gardener.
