Tunnel Shading

 A shady spot in the garden

It’s an ‘in-between’ time for me in the garden this week. One the one hand I am offering my plants up to the sun in the hope they will grow strong and healthy. Then on the other I am putting up loads of shading because the intense heat of the day might shrivel the leaves. 

It was this time last year I lost over 400 chamomile plants because they all cooked in the cell trays I had them in. The dark plastic absorbed the heat and the roots couldn’t cope with the burning temperatures. I don’t want to make the same mistakes again this year so I have taken a few pro-active precautions.

I had some more mature plants in the polytunnel so I have made a space for them in an area outside that gets about 3 hours direct sun mid-morning before trees obscure the rays. That way by the time the real heat of the day hits them they are in shade and keeping cool. The less mature chamomile plants will be staying in the tunnel for a few more weeks yet and I have devised some (I say) ingenious shading methods. 

The first and most obvious is by putting shade netting up. Then I have some white fleece along with a couple of cotton sheets (Taken from the painting and decorating shelf)

I was using some large 8x4 aluminium foil covered sheets of Kingspan floor insulation as a type of reflector of the sun and this worked well over the duller days but now they are acting like spotlights which are heating up the plants even more so they will be repurposed at some point. In their place I now have large rolls of 2mm unused foam and foil undrlay which was left over from a wooden click floor installation. This is lightweight and so I have slotted it under the metal bars and plastic on the tunnel. It runs the whole length of the tunnel and can be rolled up when it’s cloudy and rolled down when the plants need a bit of shade. Ingenious if I do say so myself and free too which is an added bonus.

I’d eventually like to get one of those polytunnel covers that has a green mesh at the bottom and when you can roll up the bottom metre when the weather gets warm. This improves ventilation keeping the air flowing through the plants reducing the chance of fungal diseases. The extra air also helps to give some resistance to the plants leaves, firming them out and helping to keep them compact and less likely to go leggy. 

So far my improvisations seem to be working. I do need to water a couple of times a day when the sun is out a lot, but at least last year when I watered the cells, I swear I could hear hissing noises as the water was evaporating with the heat.

Shady

There are a couple of areas in the garden where I am happy not to have much sun at all as the display of shade loving plants looks wonderful. It’s a simple display of just three plants but they really complement each other. At the back I have the feathery leaves of a fern, in front of this I have a lime green hosta just about to flower and underneath them I have Ajuga reptans 'Atropurpurea' with its deep purple leaves. It’s a great combination and totally unplanned which is sometimes the best way to go. 

Catnip Capers

My Catnip venture is on a go slow at the moment. I did grow the mint from seed and thought about putting it for sale but I wasn’t happy. The plants were just long, single stemmed plants and looked a bit weedy in their 4cm plugs. I made the decision to chop them all back to near ground level so they now have a chance to bush out on multi stems. I’ll be a lot happier selling something more substantial and sturdy looking so I will now need to wait a few weeks for them to mature. 

Catnip is extremely popular and is widely available in pet shops and supermarkets. I have it on good authority that it has fallen under the ‘Psychoactive Substances Act’ which bans anything psychoactive other than alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, so therefore, since catnip has mild psychoactive properties, it has been banned by default. 

I’m not sure if anyone will take the time and trouble to track down and arrest gardeners who supply their cats with the dried leaves, but it’s just another reason why gardening is such an exciting hobby.

Hide the catnip plants in a secluded spot next to the also banned St John’s Wort.