Growing without heat

We are still building the new nursery and so we are having to make the best of the interim facilities we have. Thankfully we have our small ‘Keder’ polytunnel. It’s normally our propogation house but it’s now everything, crammed with our over-wintered stock, a small potting bench and as many potted-up plants as we can fit in.

One of the other things we don’t have yet is electricity. We would normally give most plants a few weeks of base heat at this time of year - just enough to break dormancy and get the roots growing again but not enough to make the top-growth soft. As adding heat is not posslble it is quite interesting to see the difference the lack of heat makes to the plants.

The Keder adds about 1 degree extra at night but easily 5 degrees or more during day-light. If there is direct sun we quickly have to open the side curtains to keep the temperature at a maximum 15 degrees - more may lead to drying out and shock.

So far, it seems that they are growing but much more slowly. It may be that we find they are sturdier and more pest-resistant. This will just be my observations and not really very scientific as it was not planned.

Hopefully we will have more facilities in the next month and be able to increase our production volumes and be able to open our ‘shop’ again.