Green Power!

Today we welcomed the Green Power Team to the site. They worked very hard, despite the weather being a bit of a pain, with short sharp showers bringing everyone into the polytunnel every so often.

The Green Power Team join Matt and Ray, sheltering from a shower in the polytunnel.

The main tasks that they tackled for us were to clear the area where a memorial bench will go, and also to start digging the heat sink that we want to experiment with in the polytunnel.

The idea of the heat sink came originally from the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales, where they use a big pile of slate to hold the heat in their polytunnel. It heats up during the day, and gives off the heat at night, so that the temperature isn't too hot by day and isn't too cold by night. This can mean a few extra weeks of growing time in Spring and Autumn without putting in a heater in the tunnel. Our version is a bit more complicated. This one uses a solar-powered computer fan to push hot air from the top of the polytunnel, down a tube into an insulated box of rocks, to store the heat.  At least that's the theory! After today - all we have is a hole, but hopefully it will be big enough to make a difference.

The team start to dig the hole for the heat sink.

The hole diggers were undeterred by the amount of bricks and big rocks they dug up, and made a very good start to the heat sink, and another group began to collect rocks from our waste rock and stone pile to eventually put in it. The site for the bench is now clear and level, so we should be able to start laying slabs and planting it up soon. And one of the team also did an amazing job weeding our paths in the main growing area, so it now looks pretty tidy.

Rock collecting

The team working on the bench site.

Well done to all the Green Power team - their efforts have really helped make a difference to the site and got us closer to our goals.