When do you take the poly tunnel off?

[springbok]

Tonight on Gardeners world, they removed the poly tunnel from Monty's carrots as the seedlings had popped through!

Is this the normal thing to do, as all my seedlings have popped up on all my veg, and I haven't removed the poly tunnels yet.

Can anyone explain to me what the correct method is :) please!

[springbok]

[star]

I sowed my carrots under a cloche in Feb, when they germinated I opening it on mild days. We had a mild spell for a couple of weeks thats when I removed the cloche altogether and replaced it with very fine netting to leave on for the carrot fly.

I think carrots are pretty hardy so they kinda got hardened off in the opening cloche process. There was no set plan to what I did, more luck than management really ;)

[davyw1]

Removing the cloches stops the plant from being drawn

[springbok]

Is that with all the veg?

My cabbages, broc, brussels, raddishes, lettuces, beetroot, carrots, peas... all have germinated!  All under poly's.  The peas are in a wigwam frame covered in fleece, should i take that off too.

Star, with the fine mesh.. is it a special purchase??  I like to recycle, will net curtain suffice :D

[Robert_Brenchley]

If the veg are in trays I'd leave them on a while, to stop them drying out so fast. Otherwise, there's probably no need to leave them over hardy veg.

[antipodes]

I tried a polytunnel this year, and out of carrots, beets, fennel and peas sown in it, only the peas have done well (in fact I can't seem to get peas started off in the ground, out of about 30 sown I have about 6 plants on the plot I did outside)! I can't even see that any of the other seedlings germinated. Can anyone explain why this might be?

[betula]

T he only thing I can think of is your germination temperatures have not been high enough.

Keep the compost moist. :)

[alfie]

I used a  polythene poly tunnel for all my direct sown veg and for some veg i had sown in a cool greenhouse in individual modules and then transplanted. I also planted up  some veg directly outside without cloche protection as a bit of a trial to see how they compared to the cloched veg.
Well its been about 6 weeks now and the veg under the plastic cloche is bigger,stronger and healthier so i feel i made a good investment. I did however use organic slug killer and i did spot ants.
I am using the cloches to protect against the local wildlife(i have resident ducks very close by!) for a couple more weeks and then will bare all!  ;D