It didn’t take long to max out our new greenhouse🫣.

I needed more frost-protected space FAST. I thought: I’ve got nothing trellising on our cattle panel arches this season. Why not try covering them?🤔

I clipped, taped, and tucked leftover plastic remnants from our greenhouse build to test out my idea of turning our Summer trellises into Winter polytunnels.

It certainly wasn’t the prettiest thing I’d ever made, but it looked like it was going to do the job. For the next few days, I closely observed the plants inside the trial polytunnel for signs of distress. They did just fine, so I ordered another roll of greenhouse plastic to transform more trellises.

Completing the conversion of our smaller trellises gave me the momentum I needed to tackle the big tomato tunnel.

The plants seem to be quite content inside our new (unheated) Winter polytunnels. My working theory is that everything I have inside the polytunnels can handle the lower temps, but not frost. I’m expecting to have some leaf drop and die back, but the plants should all survive Winter and bounce back when temps start consistently rising. If things go as expected this season (🤞🏾), I’ll definitely be converting the Summer trellises again next Winter. I may’ve just discovered yet another great reason to add more cattle panel archways to the farm😏.