The cloche that I bought on Ebay has been sat at home for the last couple of weeks because I forgot to take it down to the allotment when I went. The thing that was even more frustrating was I again forgot to take it down this morning when I went. However, I decided that it really must be setup today, so I went back t the allotment this afternoon to set it up.
When I got the cloche out of the packaging, everything was simple enough, slide the poles through the loops in the polythene, hoop the poles and push them into the ground. The poles however are rather flimsy, and one broke as I was pushing it into the ground. I was able to rectify this problem, however, I think next year (or maybe sooner than that if it causes a problem) I will make some more substantial hoops out of metal or cane.
The instructions said to peg the edges of the polythene with tent pegs, however, as the soil is so soft, this simply would not have held the cloche in the lightest of winds.
Having played a hand in erecting several poly-tunnels in my time, I decided that a better approach would be to set this up like a mini poly-tunnel. Digging a trench down either side and burying the polythene into the ground, this worked perfectly, I decided to keep one site open and weighted down with bricks so that I can access the full length of the cloche.
The second problem I had was that the ends of the cloche were supposed to be stretched out, I did not have enough room to do this so I again buried the polythene on both ends. This has worked ok, however it does mean that the cloche is not stretched out as much as it could be.
Here are some pictures of the process.
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- The Finished Cloche
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- Stamped down the soil
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- Covered the polythene
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- Dug a trench
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- Peg Holes – just would not hold the cloche
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- Hoops setup
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- The Polythene
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- Dug in the compost
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- Added some compost
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- Breaking up the soil
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- Digging over the soil
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- Un-worked soil
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