I was thinking the plants in the polytunnel might be getting a bit cold since the daily temperatures have plummeted around here. I know people often use fancy greenhouse heaters but I don’t have one and I didn’t want to risk anything that would burn it down so soon after I actually got it put up!

As I often do, I decided to do a little experiment and use some of the tricks I have when sowing seeds. First up was the hot water bottles which I placed between pots, the theory being the heat would radiate to all pots around it.

Next up was the hand warmers – you know the type of thing you click the metal part and it turns solid and hot? Well they work well getting seeds to germinate so I placed them around areas which I thought would need a heat boost.

I’m not expecting any fruit from these but at least I can keep the poor plants alive a little while longer.

The next thing I tried was containers. I hear about people keeping containers out in the sunshine then putting them inside so the heat can radiate from them all night. Well, we didn’t have sunshine when I was doing all of this (it was torrential rain), so I used hot water!

Some of the tobacco plants have very big leaves so I’m trying to keep them going for as long as possible – flowers would be nice!

Other plants are looking reasonably happy all things considered.

I’ve just checked the weather forecast and it looks like we might hit 19/20 C on Tuesday and Wednesday – woohoo!!!

That’s practically tropical.