Update - March 8, 2011

The tunnel was starting to get hot so I decided to put the shade cloth on. It lowers the temps by about 12 degrees. Tomatoes do best between 60 and 80 degrees so if I keep the sides down it get pretty hot inside. The other day it was 100 inside.



It's a little hard to see them now, but Debbie planted 1800 onion plants in two days into the raised beds. They will produce 'Candy' sweet onions around June 1. We hope this year's crop will be better than last when we lost the first planting due to a cold and rainy spring. This year I'll cover them if it gets into the low 20's.

Tomato Update:

Our new plastic mulch layer did a fine job of creating the raised beds for the tomatoes. Each bed is 30" across and about 8" high. It took getting used to and was a little difficult inside the tunnel but after several attempts the beds were made.

Here comes a delivery from the basement.

The chief planter is taking a short break.

Completion for day one. 104 plants are in.

The tomatoes are in! After 9 weeks of watering, worrying, and pampering, the plants made it into the ground. The first row is covered for the upcoming freeze on Friday am. The material is called Agribon and gives 2 - 4 degrees of protection. The tunnel itself also contributes to heat retention as does the black plastic. Tomorrow we'll cover the rest of the plants. After all the rows are covered I'm going to add 1 more layer to the top of the rows as insurance. Don't want to lose the tomatoes now. Here is a picture of a nice one!

This has been the month for rain! Last weekend we had almost 2 inches of rain and today we had 2.8". Here are a few pictures of our planting areas during the storms.

This is a good example of one advantage of a high tunnel. Even if the temperature co-operated, there is no way anything can be planted until at least a week of dry weather. Inside the tunnel we have full control of the water using drip irrigation.