Cloches And Tunnels

Cloches are a kind of miniature portable greenhouse. Properly used they can be of great help in increasing and improving edible crops and in helping to grow ornamentals especially the tender ones.

Although small their mobility gives them an advantage over frames and with a carefully planned programme they can be in use over successive crops all year round.

They can be used to mautre crops early, to keep plants cropping longer in autumn and for ripening sub tropical crops such as melons, grapes, vines, peppers and so on. For taller crops they can be used standing on end, two round a plant.

Soil can be dried and warmed before sowing outdoors by putting them over the seed bed some weeks beforehand. Cloched strawberries will ripen at least three weeks earlier than uncloched ones.

Slightly tender herbaceous plants can be protected through winter: sweet peas, gladioli, bedding plants and half hardy annuals can be planted early and cloched and so on.

There are many types of cloches - The chase barn cloche was one of the first and there are now wire reinforced glass cloches, opaque white or clear plastic cloches and plastic sheet tunnels on wire hoops. Cloches can be barn shaped, round, flat topped or triangular.

As with greenhouses the glazing should be kept clean unless shading is applied in summer.