[vintner]

Spent a good bit of time this spring building a hoop house. Folks call them greenhouses, but it's not heated. It's supposed to extend my growing season by a month in the spring & fall. I had some of the PVC & lumber on hand & all the bricks. Spent under $250 on it. Nearly 1/2 of that was the 4 year, 6mil greenhouse plastic. Most of my time & energy was spent amending the soil that went into the raised beds inside. We had night time temps in the 20's last week that killed off some broccoli seedlings that I put in there to see how they'd do. We're supposed to start warming up this weekend. I plan to fill it up soon with broccoli, lettuce, spinach & a couple other cold hardy veggies.



The walkway's a little skewed because when I planted my garlic last fall I wasn't quite sure where the tunnel would end up.

[hamstring]

Looks good I like the raised beds.

[Bilboscrogins]

Looks good mate. I have used fresh manure in a setup like this to bring up temps. You could use grass clippings. Just fill that path as deep as you can with clippings/manure should do the trick.

[shack]

Hey Vint, nice job on the hoop/green house. I'm anxious to see it in action.

[vintner]

Originally Posted by shack

Hey Vint, nice job on the hoop/green house. I'm anxious to see it in action.

Thanks Bro I'll get more pix up when things are up & running.
hamstring & Bilboscrogins: Thanks for the kind words & advice
Stay safe &

[BusyB]

I like it !

[HuffnPufferfish]

greenhouses dont need to be heated

woodchips/mulch will create a lot of heat while decomposing, and often free to get from the city's chippers

[xet]

x2 fill that center with the highest compost pile possible and receive all the free heat + co2 + feeding for free99

[vintner]

The high tunnel is in full swing. We've had mostly successes, but a few fails as well. Those, primarily due to the fact that I started planting in there 3-4 weeks late. I fully expected this to be a learning process. My 1st lesson was temperature regulation. If the sun is out, the tunnel HAS to be opened up. Even if it's just the window on cooler days. It can be 45 degrees out, but on a sunny day it will feel like a sauna in there! But, then if freezing temps are expected, we can't forget to close it up again in the evening. I'm pretty sure that's how I lost the 1st broccoli seedlings I put in.
We've been eating several varieties of lettuce for over a month, as well as spinach, snow peas & now broccoli.





My wife has very limited taste in veggies, so my main goal in building the tunnel is to be able to harvest a handful of crops as early & late in the season as possible. Primarily broccoli & a few leafy greens she'll eat.
I forgot to mention in my first post that there will be a center beam and a couple of support posts to hold the beam up in the winter months. Those pvc hoops will collapse under a moderate snow load. The beam & posts will be removed every spring. The main reason I went with the dimensions I did was so I could stand upright in it, & I'm 6'4"+. It's 12' x 18' & 6'6" high.
Thank you all for the kind words & the friendly advice