A definitely less than 25 acre greenhouse(?)

[grunt]

We are blessed here with a growing season that is both long enough and reliable enough that we don't really need a greenhouse. We do need a sort of cold frame to get things going early enough to set out in mid May, and this is the rig I have developed.
http://picasaweb.google.com/TVgrunt/Hoophouse
I put a heater inside each one, just to ensure they don't get frosted if the temperature drops. When they get transplanted out of the hoophouses, they are already hardened off, and never show any sign of transplant shock. If you have any suggestions for improvements on these, please do fire away.
Cheers
grunt

[dokutaaguriin]

Looks great!
I assume the plastice is UV stabilised??? Where did you get it?
Jeff

[grunt]

I assume the plastice is UV stabilised??? Where did you get it?

Jeff: I don't believe it is stabilized plastic. It was just a roll that I picked up at the local hardware store. Since the hoophouse is only used in the spring to start our plants in, and the plastic isn't stretched tight enough to stress it, the plastic lasts for several years.
The plastic in the photos was in its fourth rotation when the photos were taken. I started out using clips made from pices of the hoop material to hold the plastic on, but that doesn't work if you get much wind (clips up to 25 feet from their initial location), and the clips do work through the plastic before too long. The clip abrasions are the only damage marks on the plastic to date. If you run the plastic down past the sides of the bed, and the ends are sealed properly, the crossline method will hold up in at least 30 mph winds.
I'm going to try a raised open framework to attach the hoops to this summer, with the object of putting a canopy over the tomatoes. Might help reduce splits a bit. I did a quick and nasty version of the idea last year (the Pink Novicok, and unripe Goat Bag in my other album http://picasaweb.google.com/TVgrunt/Tomatoes were grown under this first attempt). I know I have a couple of photos around someplace, if they didn't evaporate in the last computer crash (I know, backup everything, including your backups). If I can locate them, I'll add them to the hoophouse gallery.
Once you have the materials together, and cut to use, it only takes a couple of hours to set everything up. If you leave the hoops up at the end of the season (they don't get in the way of most garden crops) it takes about an hour to set up a hoop house.
Cheers
grunt

[dcarch]

Do you have Farmteck catalog? Lots of good stuff.

dcarch

[grunt]

dcarch: No, I don't. Unfortunately, for most things that I might be wanting, extra shipping and the difference in the Cdn/US$ would probably make it uneconomical anyway. I am blessed with living in a small community that is largely agriculturally oriented, so most things I want are (with the exception of the micro tubing I use for drip irrigation - - - that comes from the only source I have found, in Lubbock, Texas)
Cheers
grunt

[grunt]

One last try on my own, to get the photo to display in the page.


grunt

[feraltomatoes]

Simple, cheap and affective. I like it!
Great row of tomatoes, very healthy and very loaded.

Brad........

[Earl]

Grunt, do you bump your head while working in them? :-) Very nice job, no, great job.

[grunt]

Thanks for the nice comments. I had been talking with my neighbour (whose 30 year old garden is much prettier and more productive than mine) about getting some sort of cover over the tomatoes before the rains started. Posts were already in place (to hold up the tomatoes, with a modified Florida weave), so I just extended the hoophouse idea. It all went up in an afternoon. I was more concerned with beating the forecast, than with pretty, and this was what happened.