We want to grow our own fruit and vegetables – but in a windy area without shelter?

We live in a very windy area right on the coast with hardly any shelter from the wind. A regular polytunnel would probably not survive the storms or high winds that we frequently get, especially not the winter storms that rage across the land.
The cost of a polytunnel was also something that we couldn’t afford, so we set out to think about what are the best options in the structure against wind and also keep the cost for a greenhouse as low as possible.

The cost for a Dome with 5.5m diameter came to approx:

• 150 Euro for mounting Pods
• 100 Euro for wood & screws
• 250 Euro for the reinforced polyethylene plastic sheeting
• 50 Euro for extra mounting brackets inside and around the pods.

Once we had the dome up, we noticed that the temperature inside was very hot and humid. A good indicator, but for the summer months it might be too hot. So we have installed a simple door as an entrance and a window at the top of the dome to allow for ventilation.

What we still plan to do:
-> We will still screw some extra wood battens on the structure from outside to keep the plastic sheeting in place – like sandwiching it to the dome structure and hoping for less wear during high winds.
-> We will add ropes and pegs to tie down the structure on the inside and out.

We are quite proud to have set this up, it took quite a lot of hours to get it right, but with the lessons learned, I believe one can set up a dome over the course of a weekend.
If you are interested to do this yourself or improve on our design, please let us know.

Looking forward to hearing from you!