← The polytunnel H11-05 · Module 5 of 7 · Pages: 19 · Worksheets: 6

What to grow when under cover: a 12-month guide

What to plant in the polytunnel, at what spacing and when, how to train tomatoes and cucumbers and how to pick from the same tunnel from March to March, by climate zone

€9

Secure checkout with Stripe · VAT included · The PDFs are in the language of this page.

Whole series: The polytunnel, €39

What to grow when under cover: a 12-month guide

In short

  • A tunnel has three seasons: spring greens, summer warm crops and autumn–winter greens.
  • The tunnel is for crops whose yield warmth increases most: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines.
  • Winter greens are sown in August and September: from November to February they hardly grow, they are just picked.
  • Train tomatoes as a single stem (cordon) on a string, remove side shoots every week and stop them 6–8 weeks before the end.
  • Tunnel soil works all year: 5–10 L of compost per m² every year and a rotation between beds.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. One tunnel, three seasons
  2. What goes in the tunnel
  3. Layout and spacing
  4. Tomatoes under cover
  5. Cucumbers, peppers and aubergines
  6. Spring before the tomatoes
  7. Autumn and winter: greens
  8. Tunnel soil: feeding and rest
  9. Three zones, three tunnels
  10. Example: a 5 × 10 m tunnel through the year
  11. Most common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Calendar for lowland UK and Ireland
  • Calendar for upland and cold-winter areas
  • Calendar for hot-summer areas
  • Year-round bed plan
  • Plant and yield calculator
  • Planting and harvest log

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

This guide in other languages:

BalkanDeutschEspañolFrançaisPortuguêsTürkçeالعربية