Topping it Off
This morning was the perfect morning to get up before dawn and cover the hoop house with the new plastic. There can’t be a bit of wind or we end up “para-sailing” instead of calmly covering the frame. Here are some pictures of its new wraps:
There is a mysterious lack of pictures of the whole crew of us out there in the predawn hauling the plastic up over the frame and pulling it tight so that Mark and Willie could screw on the lath that holds the plastic down.
What did we do with the old plastic, you ask? Well, some of it went into making the mini-hoop house in the side yard that protects some of the greens we’ve been eating. Some of it is being used to provide a secondary cover inside the hoop house for extra-cold days. You can see the framework for that in the picture of the dawn’s early light peeking into the hoop house.
You may also be wondering what the dogs were doing while we were all outside ( or maybe you weren’t, but you should have been). They were racing about and hunting for small furry things and having a generally riotous time out there as they usually do when they are allowed to choose their activities. There are, unfortunately, no action shots of them playing this morning, but perhaps afternoon pics will do:
-
- trying to be good
-
- failing to be good
-
- giving up on being good
Until next time,
Janice
You might be tempted to make your greenhouse wider and lower at this point to get more floor space out of it – but be careful. If you have snow in your area it will slide off of a high peak a lot better than it will if your greenhouse has more of a flattened shape – and the same goes for heavy rains. If your hoop house shape is too flattened it will cave in the first time it snows or rains really hard!
We are not changing the shape of the hoop house, just the location. This shape works very well for us and its height allows us to grow vertically.