Complimentary Blueberry Juice

You probably know at this point that my preferred method of learning is to learn by doing and learn by repetition. There’s nothing quite like the school of hard knocks, real situations, and mother nature to smack you around. And there’s nothing like repeating the same task over and over…until you burn out the overthinking in your brain and find all the little things that are either superfluous or steps that can be skipped entirely (or things that need to be doubled down on).

And so we come to our tomato tunnel, which started off as a very exciting project. After it was finally installed and planted, we even had ceremonial beers to celebrate our grand achievement.

Promptly we encountered reality.

The rolled-up sides folded down. We had to roll them up and again they would slide down and again we would roll them up. This is a major problem as it can easily get 40C+ in there very, very quickly, and without end walls or doors like a proper greenhouse, it is mission critical that those sides stay up for air flow (and to not fry our tomatoes).

Then the plastic blew off entirely.

We pulled that plastic tight and locked down them ropes and set it up again.

Lookin’ good! Or so we thought. Then the sides rolled down and again we would roll them up.

And so on, and so on.

Then we thought hey, we need some way of holding this heavy plastic up, the ropes aren’t cutting it. So we shoved carriage bolts through every hoop. That finally kept things up (though some of the carriage bolts bent under the weight of the poly).

This is just the structural issues here! Nevermind trying to keep these tomatoes upright. Carl and Matt spent a lot of hours trying to weave them, but the combination of inexperience on this technique, the wrong kind of bale twine setup, and 6′ trellising posts, getting three weaves around the tomatoes was an achievement unto itself.

Then there’s the watering. While it was nice we got tons of rain and we didn’t have to bother with it at first (actually it caused problems), now that we’ve trucked a tank of water out there and slowly pump it out with a generator several times, because it isn’t hooked up to our irrigation as of now, this is becoming a real chore.

And finally, last week, we hit the last straw. The poly had completely come off. Again. And as far as I can tell, it wasn’t even that windy. So by July 20th, with a forecast of 30C+ weather and 20C overnights on the way, we just decided to give up (for now) and leave the plastic off, and try putting it back on toward the end of August or into September whenever the weather patterns change.

Here’s where the magic of gardening and farming comes in.

Even after all these “failures” we’re still going to get a boatload of tomatoes. The Cat Tunnel is just for now, for us, an under-utilized tool that we haven’t learned how to use yet. Just like if a crop gets over run with weeds you will probably get a crop, the tunnel itself was not the thing making or breaking our success.

After all, we planted the tomatoes. And we applied all our planting techniques and whatnot, and they grew. It’s quite the jungle now.

Here’s some Alice Dream tomatoes and Japanese Trifeles, and we’ve picked two almost-ripe Cherokee Carbons.

The important thing for us is to realize that the #1 thing about the Cat Tunnel is to be able to get these tomatoes in a couple weeks early, and keep it toasty in May, which allows the Tomatoes to grow quickly when there is still risk of frost. So at the end of July during a hot period, this isn’t needed. On the other side of the solstice, the Cat Tunnel allows us to have frost protection in September, and keep these specialty tomatoes which can be 70+ days to maturity to keep producing. We can even plan to remove the poly during peak summer next year.

The #2 thing is seeing why the poly blew off. The placement of the tunnel now is in a wide open area that leaves it vulnerable specifically to north-south winds. Next year we will move it to a sheltered tree line area, protecting it from these side-winds and leave it only vulnerable to a westerly, in which case it’ll hit the “head” of the “caterpillar” and be more “aerodynamic.” That’s what all caterpillars are known for, their….aerodynamics.

The #3 thing is nutrition and irrigation. Knowing we are going to move the tunnel next year means we can do some soil prep in advance. It’ll also be possible to tie it into some irrigation so instead of lugging a tank and a generator out, we can just turn a valve. Now if only I can afford the fertigation upgrade for next season…hmmm.

The #4 thing is trellising. Weaving these tall varieties is a waste of time, as we learned the hard way. But we thought it would be better than clipping and trimming all 266 plants individually, as we do in the hoop house. Next year we’ll probably do individual stakes for each and just tie a small string on each as needed.

The #5 thing is more cat tunnels. These things, we can see, can make us way more successful with crops that are otherwise only available for a few to several weeks a season. Eggplants and peppers could benefit from a similar system…and indeed we see our hoop house peppers absolutely loaded and thriving with the extra time to establish and get past the first fruit set. Extra tunnels would allow us to plan more, have better soil health programs, and let us rotate properly, without having to remove the tunnels and set up each season.

#6….looking forward to trying all these delicious varieties out!

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice

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