Investment

Last week I took a bit of a spur of the moment decision and bought a polytunnel. I had been thinking about getting one for some time to give me more space to grow a greater variety of plants, but never really thought I’d end up with one.

I am now left with the problem of where to site it. The length of my garden is south facing with a fairly tall hedge running along the southern edge. This means one side of the garden gets almost all the day sun but the side closest to hedge gets very little. So it goes without saying that it needs to be on the sunny side, one flaw with that is there is already a garden shed, an oil tank and an existing stone built flower bed (now veg patch) in the way. So either the shed or the flower bed needs to go.

It seems a bit contradictory to move a suitable veg patch just to put a polytunnel on and use as an indoor veg patch so my preference would be to move the shed. Easier said than done, however I will be at least attempting to empty it out and drag it a few metres further down the garden before I even consider a plan B.

Being a sizeable investment the idea is to make some money back by increasing the amount of seedlings I sow and selling them on as young plants at local car boot sales and markets. Another new venture, but an important one to balance the books. After all if growing my own vegetables is more expensive than just buying them then how am I supposed to convince anyone else to jump on the grow your own bandwagon? A little investment at the start will pay off later down the line and should enable me to not only grow more, but to grow a wider variety over a longer period of time.