Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

[moolie]

I have two growing teenagers who like fruit, so quantity (and variety) is good.

I can peaches, pears, apple sauce, and fruit cocktail plus do a few types of fruit leather. And we always have apples around, plus bananas or whatever is in season (read cheap) whenever we've been to the grocery store recently.

 

[moolie]

Well, we got the hoops for the hoop house up this evening and now we just need to secure the plastic.

We had to come in because the bugs were eating us alive, but we'll get it finished off tomorrow evening. Hubs plans to brace the ridge pole front and back with 2x4s, and then we have clear vapour barrier plastic sheeting that we'll secure with half-pipe type clamps. Trying to decide how to make "doors" for the aisles between the raised beds, probably with peel-n-stick zippers.

 

[justusnak]

Great job!! I see greens in your winter future! You might also think about Velcro for the doors....alternate the openings...so the cold air stays out.

 

[moolie]

We thought about velcro, but we get a LOT of wind here and weren't sure it would hold through our fall storms?

The other thing we're not sure about is if the plastic will hold up when it snows, but it's easy to take down so if it seems to be sagging we'll take it down and store the parts in the garage. We're hoping that our slope is steep enough for the snow to slide off, but we are spanning 3 2x8" raised beds with 30" pathways between, so a total width of 132" with 20' hoops.

Our hoop house is built with 10' sections of 3/4" pvc pipe: there are 4 hoops and each is made out of two 10' sections of pipe joined in the middle with either a 4-way connector (middle two hoops) or 3-way connection (end two hoops). We cut a length of pvc pipe into pieces to make the ridge pole that is attached to each hoop with the connectors. The ends of the hoops are slid over 30" lengths of copper pipe pounded into the ground with 12" left above ground. The plastic will be attached to the front and back first, then the top, with half-pipe clamps (sold with the pvc connectors--we got ours at Lee Valley Tools ) and also battened along the bottom edges to the sides and front/back of the raised beds with strips of wood.

Photo from the Lee Valley Tools link posted above to show how the connectors and clamps work:

 

[framing fowl]

Those peel & stick zippers look like the trick! Looking forward to seeing how your setup holds with the snow.

 

[gettinaclue]

How cool is that!

 

[moolie]

Thanks everyone!

Those peel & stick zippers look like the trick! Looking forward to seeing how your setup holds with the snow.

It may take a few 2x4 braces, but we're hopeful!

 

[moolie]

Got the plastic on last night and just took a photo--we still need to tie down the bottom edges all around with 2x4s but it is otherwise working wonderfully--quite a bit hotter inside than out (will have to watch the temps with a thermometer. We're opening the doors during the daytime and zipping up at night for now, and will shut it down for longer each day as the days get cooler.

So nice to know everything is safe from frost--we also have old sheets that go over each hoop-row for when it gets colder

We still have tons of tomatoes in there that need to ripen up along with long English cukes, we are leaving our carrots in as long as possible and just eating them out of the garden as we need them, and we just planted some cool weather crops a couple of weeks ago: Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach, Swiss Chard, and Cabbage.

 

[framing fowl]

Looks great Moolie!

 

[JRmom]

Nice!