22 Mar 2016 Pilot Project – Vegetable Tunnels

Faith Burlington Creche has been the recipient of “vegetable tunnels”, a new pilot project from A Spring of Hope. For those of our partner schools who don’t have any trees surrounding their gardens, these easily-constructed structures of tubing and high density poly netting provide a 50% shade factor, which is helpful in shielding young seedlings from the hot sun and preventing rapid evaporation of water. As an added benefit, they also protect plants from insects. They are ideal for growing fresh spinach, cabbage, onions, cherry tomatoes, green sweet peppers, beetroot, and potatoes and we anticipate they will significantly increase the yield from the gardens. Not only will our partner schools have abundant produce for lunches, they can then sell the excess to the community, thereby creating an additional income stream.

First the crew prepped the area in the garden where they planned to erect the tunnel.

Next they set the stakes for the tubing. It’s also always good to have lots of little helpers around.

Tubing is all set up, and they are now ready to set the netting.

Time to add the compost and till the soil in preparation for planting the seedlings.

All planted!

And here you can see the finished project. Thanks to the dedicated crew who worked on this!