Low-cost, Versatile Hoop Houses

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2. Cover the hoop with the plastic skin on a day when there is no wind.

Agricultural engineers call hoophouses "high tunnels," because even a 6-foot-4-inch beanpole like me can stand up comfortably inside of one. At least I can stand up in the middle of our hoop without whacking my head on the steeply sloping metal bows.

That's the second thing I would (and did) do differently — build a high tunnel with high sides. Our first hoop was a Quonset hut-style shelter with almost no clearance on the sides. Sidewall height of the next two tunnels ranges from 4 1/2 to 5 feet. That makes it easy to work a planter, garden tiller or even a small tractor or PTO-powered tiller right up against the baseboards. There is almost no wasted space.

Usually, hoophouses run from 14 to 21 feet wide. Standard commercial length is 96 feet, but you can make them as long or as short as you want. The longest hoophouse I have seen is 304 feet long and is completely portable. That's because it's made in 16-foot-long sections that are easily picked up and carried by two strong people to cover new beds.

Gray Frase says he patterned his modular hoops after Eliot Coleman's much-publicized movable greenhouses, which are pulled back and forth with a tractor and cables. Mobile hoops let you make better use of cover crops and crop rotation, while increasing crop production and getting an even bigger bang for your hoophouse buck. For example, you can leave a moveable hoop over late-season tomatoes until well after frost. When the tomatoes are played out, you can move that same hoop over more cold-hardy crops that were started in open ground. The hoop then provides protection for them through winter.

Sliding hoops back and forth is OK for flatland farmers, but not for those of us with what is politely called "gently rolling" land. Frase, for example, farms on hillsides at about 1,900-feet elevation in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania. He moves his smaller hoops up and down the hillsides, as needed, to follow his vertical crop rotation.

"There's a lot of rain and dew at our elevation," Frase says. "The tunnels keep that moisture out and solve a lot of fungal problems." His hoops produce tons of early and late tomatoes, "but the winter garden is the real payoff," he says. "It produces thousands of dollars worth of salad for free in winter."

Frase takes his gardening seriously. He has to. The 10 acres he oversees provide vegetables year-round for 700 men, women and children in the Bruderhof community in Farmington, Pennsylvania.

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