The Polytunnel Handbook

The last decade has seen an unprecedented rise in demand for organic fruit and vegetables, and each year more of us are discovering that homegrown food is fresher, tastier, and more nutritious than food shipped in from elsewhere. A polytunnel can be used as an affordable, low-carbon aid to growing your own food all year round, from crispy salads and fresh vegetables in the dead of winter to juicy melons and mouthwatering grapes in high summer.

The Polytunnel Handbook looks at all aspects of polytunnel use, from planning your purchase to harvesting the rewards, and includes a step-by-step guide detailing how polytunnels are put up and maintained. There are chapters on developing healthy soil and preventing pests, and a jargon-free guide to the range of often mystifying accessories that many tunnel retailers offer. In addition, the do-it-yourself enthusiast will find a full set of instructions for building a polytunnel from scratch, and the authors explain how to keep your polytunnel productive in every season.

Andy McKee first grew vegetables with his father at the age of five, and since then he has grown food in situations ranging from a seventeenth-story window box to guerrilla gardening in the middle of a Christmas-tree plantation. McKee had his eyes opened to the potential of polytunnels during a visit to one featuring a hot tub warmed by a clay oven. He lives with his wife and family in rural Dorset, England, and is entirely self-sufficient in vegetables.

Mark Gatter began growing vegetables while homesteading in northern California in the early eighties and has been an avid gardener ever since. He's a firm advocate of an organic, raised-bed approach and relies on a polytunnel to keep fresh food on the table right through the winter. He and his wife share their smallholding in Wales with eleven sheep, several chickens, and two dogs.