Undercover Device: The Cloche

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Experience with plastic-covered reinforcement wire cages had taught our staff that these unwieldy structures would be unsuitable for the five-foot-wide beds that had to be covered. Attempts to find spring-steel hoops and double-clamped plastic failed. Ten-foot-long iron reinforcement rods proved to be very difficult to bend into hoops. Tunnel cloches made of half-inch PVC pipe seemed the best answer.

MAKING THE PVC CLOCHE

The basic construction of a PVC cloche is simple. Lengths of the white plastic pipe are cut (in MOM's case, to ten feet), bent into semicircles, and pushed down over lengths of rebar that have been driven into the ground on either side of the bed to be covered. A hacksaw for cutting and a sledgehammer for driving the rebar are the only tools needed.

A rebar "tent stake"—ours were each two feet long—is first sunk into the ground at either end of the tunnel-to-be, angled slightly away from the bed itself. Heavy, clear plastic that's ten feet wide and seven mils thick is stretched over the hoops and pulled together into a bunch at either end. Rope is wound around each bundle and pulled tight, then stretched around the staking rebars and knotted (see photograph). Tension holds the plastic in place—down along the ground when the cloche is shut, or partway up the sides when a bit of ventilation is required. To allow full access to air and sun, the plastic can be pushed all the way up and over the top of the hoops so that it accordianpleats on the other side. Should the cover become loose, one need only tighten the slipknot that holds the plastic to the stakes.

We had no trouble with this structure, even though it was subjected to wind, rain, and frost. It was tiresome, later in the season, to have to drop everything and run to ventilate the cloche around 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning so the plants wouldn't get cooked! After several days of this, however, our gardeners decided to risk frost damage, and removed the plastic altogether. By that time, the plants were hardened off and mature enough to be unaffected by the still-chilly spring nights.

MOM'S TIMETABLE

Our summer-garden-in-spring project began in January with the planting of seeds in the Eco-Village greenhouses. As the young plants developed, they were transferred from ger mination flats to prick-out flats, then to containers (the sizes of these were varied to suit the plants). On April 22, the tunnel cloches were set up over the beds in front of the house to warm the soil. Around April 25, the assortment of plants was transferred to the cloche. They thrived in their new, protected environment. And beginning on May 3—eight days after planting and only three days after the last frost—the plastic covers were removed and photographs taken.

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