It's to hot.

I will start by giving you guys some tips I have looked into to help cool down your polytunnel. Ours got far too hot and sadly our peas didn't make it and the sweetcorn is looking a bit sad.

Tip 1

If you can try putting up some kind of blind or dark cover to keep the light out during the hotter parts of the day. A blind would be better as you can increase or decrease the amount of light that gets let through, but granted most tunnels will not have a place to hang them. A much simpler system would be to use dark material and cable ties or magnets to hold it in place.

Tip 2

Water, cool water really helps but can also shock the plants so be careful. One of the old boys on our allotments told me to put full watering cans in the tunnel in the morning, and then use them in the evening when the water has warmed up. Another old boy told me he sprays the floor to cool it down, especially if you have a stone floor as the stone will retain the heat, so cooling these down helps a lot.

Tip 3

Good ventilation is something I didn't think about when choosing my spot for our tunnel. Make sure when planning your spot you can get a good breeze flowing through it. This breeze will also aid with pollination. Open all doors and vents if you have them, our rear opening is a screen but I have taken that off as in my head even the screen would reduce airflow.

Tip 4

This is a little bit out there, but if you have the time and maybe an engineering degree you could create a ground source heat pump. A simple allotments style one that is. So, at around 12ft underground the temperature is a constant 12 degrees. If you were adventurous, you could bury ducting pipe underground with one end of the pipe at either end of your tunnel. You would then use a solar-powered fan to circulate the air through one end, down under the ground, cooling it before it comes out the other side.

Maybe someone will try that one, it may work for winter growing to help heat your tunnel...

Like I touched on earlier we have lost our peas, we managed to get the last harvest from them and also put some aside for seed saving. I think we will replace them with maybe cabbage or leave the space ready for a winter crop as the bed does need topping up with soil.

We are now on in some cases our third sowing in the tunnel. The salad beds are producing a constant stream of lettuce and herbs and we have just started to pick some of the carrots. We have just planted some more little gem lettuce, spinach and radish.

We have recently put our second sowing of cauliflowers in and are getting ready to harvest our broccoli.

The tomatoes are not producing as many flowers this year, this is the same in our hot house so I am not sure why. Our cucumbers are coming along and we have harvested a few as well as courgettes. Our peppers and chillies have all started to produce a crop but are not at the stage ready to harvest yet.

I am worried about our sweetcorn, I am not sure they are pollinating, they need a lot of wind and insects to help them. I have tried helping them out with a small paint brush and also shaking them. But I am just not sure this is working.

This is the first year we have grown aubergines and I can report we have a couple growing, like with the sweetcorn I was worried about them pollinating and gave them a helping hand with a brush and a shake. The shake will most likely do nothing but it made me feel better.

Once again if you're reading this, thank you for taking the time out of your day. I am not an expert; I am just sharing my experiences with you and maybe it helps in some way. For more on our allotment head over to our Instagram page @allotment102. We try to post a few times a week and we share everything good and bad