Hoop House – ONE HUBCAP FARM

Posted on January 31, 2019February 10, 2019 by Mary Ann

Plan your garden for the spring

Every winter, I enjoy planning my garden for the coming year. Flipping through seed catalogs, perusing websites, and filling in labels on maps of the garden are lovely occupations for a cold winter day.

I keep records to make sure I don’t plant the tomatoes in the same spot year after year, preventing disease buildup and nutrient depletion. I also create plans at the beginning of the year to ensure I have a space for every vegetable.

Nothing is worse (and I have done this) than planting the garden and realizing you forgot a critical crop.

This year, because I am attempting to grow vegetables for sale, my planning has become even more complex. I created some basic documents that I print from my computer and fill in with a pencil and highlighter. The photo below is of one of my first charts.

Across the top are dates (I chose Monday) in intervals of a week, and along the side I wrote the name of the crop. From my seed packets and seed catalogs, I determine the days to maturity.

Some days to maturity are based on the date from transplant. Others, like turnips, are based on the date from direct seeding. I plan to write a post about understanding dates to maturity soon, so check back with me.

My farmers’ market opens on May 8, and I want to have plenty of vegetables ready for the market. May 6 is the Monday of that week, so I marked that date in orange highlighter, then counted back in yellow highlighter to the date I needed to sow the seed to have the plant mature on May 6.

I have made this chart available to you for free as a document you may download, edit, and print by clicking here. It’s very low-tech, and I know other farmers and the Excel-savvy folks do a more sophisticated plan, but if a pencil and a highlighter makes you happy, please use mine. It is on two sheets of paper, so you will need to tape it together to make a sheet including all the dates. Get some white-out, because you will need it when you incorrectly count the dates.

‘Polbig’ tomato will be an experiment in the hoophouse. I am writing this on January 29, and I sowed seed for the ‘Polbig’ tomato and the ‘Lunchbox’ pepper today. I will plant my main season tomato crops on March 11 to get them out into the garden at a time when the risk of frost has passed. I am not a risk taker by nature, and I learned through experience and damaged tomato plants to not push the season. I’ll provide these tomatoes with protection, and if they survive, they will be a bonus crop, not the main one.

I realized that using one chart for the entire garden was going to be too difficult to follow, so I copied the charts and made individual ones for each bed. I have ten beds, and so I put the corresponding number on each chart. Below is a much easier-to-use chart for bed 2.

I seed the broccoli in flats indoors on January 21, February 4, February 18, March 4, and March 18. I will transplant them a corresponding five weeks later, and I will expect a harvest six weeks later. This will give me a staggered harvest of broccoli into June.

By the time the earliest plantings of broccoli are finished, it will be time to sow the seeds for beans directly into the soil. They do not have to be transplanted, and they grow more quickly than broccoli, so I should be able to have a harvest of beans at one end of the bed while I am still picking broccoli from the other end.

Of course, this plan does not account for bad weather, insect damage, disease, or any other disaster that might befall my plants. But, I have a plan. Instead of wondering when I need to plant, or knowing when I need to plant and putting it off, I can consult my crop plan and sow the seeds on time.

Crop planning is sort of like lesson planning: your students may move more quickly or more slowly than you expect, or they might be sick a week, but at least you know what you are supposed to be doing in an ideal world.

By having this plan, I also know if a plant is not growing as quickly as the seed packet and the catalog promise. I can search for the cause of the problem and try to remedy the problem.

In the photo below from 2002, when I had a 300 square foot garden in my first house in a subdivision (the neighbors thought I was insane to have such an “enormous” garden) I kept notes on a piece of notebook paper. I love perusing my old garden journals. I will have to share more of them in other posts.

From year to year, I can also see if planting tomatoes early worked, or if it was a disaster. The first and last frost dates have shifted by several weeks since I began gardening, and I need to adjust my planting dates based on these changes. In 2002, I lived on an island off the coast of Charleston. Frosts arrived late and left early, and the soil was rich and black.

I live near Columbia, 100 miles from the ocean now, and I don’t feel comfortable setting out my tomatoes until mid-to-late April. Late frosts occur and kill the plants of the unwary gardener. So, although I might set out some tender plants early, I won’t put in the entire garden until it is definitely safe.

Now that I am gardening more seriously, (and have access to the wonders of a home computer and a printer) I made charts to document my planting plan that I will also share with you. It is a basic document that you may edit.

By keeping these brief records, (and keeping toddler fingers from removing the plant labels so I no longer know which plant is which) I have already discovered that the ‘Sun King’ broccoli seed does not germinate with any reliability, and I have discarded the seed. The broccoli seed I got at my neighborhood feed store, Sal’s Local Seed, is germinating correctly. img_3795-1

When I started the process of trying to figure out succession planning, I searched the internet and found a few resources, but many of them were geared towards those unfortunate folks who live where it’s too cold to garden most of the winter. I guess they can’t actually get outside and do any gardening for several months out of the year, so they have time to write gardening and create websites.

Grab your free downloads of the crop planning sheet and the crop note sheet and make planning your garden simple.

Posted on January 9, 2019January 9, 2019 by Mary Ann

Hoop House Completion

The weather has been sunny for the past few days, thank God, and I have been able to finish the hoop house. In this post I describe the first day of construction.

My hoop house is small and isn’t a permanent structure, but it should protect my vegetables from rain, wind, cold, and even heat. It is also something you can make in your own garden with easily available materials from a home center or online.

Here is a photo of the finished hoop house, with Phoenix kitten looking on. He hopes I make a lovely winter habitat to attract lizards and other fun things he can catch. I draped the plastic over the entire structure, with the help of my children. I could have done it alone, if I had sandbags ready to weight down the plastic. The day I completed this project was breezy, which made things interesting but manageable.

At the ends of the structure are sandbags. The professionals with large tunnels pull the plastic tight and tie it to a stake, but the sandbags are sufficient for my needs.

You can see the conduit inserted on top of the rebar. I tied rope to the rebar and zig-zagged it over the top of the hoop house to hold down the plastic. I will pull up the plastic, and then pull the rope tight to hold it up for ventilation or to get inside to work.

I cannot stand up in the structure; it is only about 4 feet tall at the apex. I also got some clips that fit on the conduit to help hold it up and to hold it in place across the top.

To put the rope on top, I had to just play with it to figure out how it worked. Here’s what I discovered: I tied the rope to the rebar, not to the conduit, because then the rope will slip up with the conduit when it moves. I tossed it diagonally across the hoop house and fished it out of the mud on the other side, and I wrapped it around the rebar on that side.

I continued this process down the hoop house with one rope (I needed one about 60 feet long, maybe a bit less, to go the length of my 35 foot long hoophouse). Then, with another rope, also about 60 feet long, I started on the other side of the first hoop and zig-zagged my way down the hoop house. My hoop house is 35 feet long. If you double the length of the hoop house, which would be 70 feet, and then double that for the two ropes, you will probably have enough rope.

At the opposite end from where I began, I ended up with two ropes. I can pull them tight to hold up the plastic when I raise it to ventilate the hoophouse, and I can relax it to let down the plastic. The plastic-moving process isn’t as simple as it sounds: I will have to go hoop by hoop to raise and to secure the plastic.

I am keeping the memory of this beautiful spinach, harvested from my cold frame, in my mind as I try to figure out how to construct and to manage all of this. I hope to have an entire hoop house of this in a few months.

To see my first day of hoop house construction, in which I put up the conduit hoops, go here.

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Mary Ann

Hoop House Construction, Day 1

This was the best I could do for a hoop house until I began my new project. The flimsy wire did the job, sort of, but it was very difficult to work with to move the plastic when I needed to access the plants and to ventilate the space on warm days. My broccoli appreciated the cover I provided for it earlier in the fall when I put shade cloth on it to protect it from the heat, however.

To make the hoop house, I drove rebar stakes into the ground five feet apart and four feet across from each other. Then I slid a piece of 1/2 inch plastic conduit, available in the electrical aisle, onto one post and bent it over onto the other post.

Rebar driven into the ground

Insertion of plastic pipe over rebar

I continued this process down the bed, to make a bed 4 feet wide by 35 feet long. PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, the plastic that makes the conduit, reacts with polyethylene in the plastic with which I will cover the hoops, and causes it to deteriorate. I spray painted the hoops to prevent the chemical reaction, and I will also add felt tape/weatherstripping to the conduit to provide further protection.

I was satisfied with the paint job, but my 12 year old came out to see what I was doing and decided to touch up some spots I had missed. Thrilled with her first opportunity to use spray paint, she made sure the hoops were painted thoroughly. I received a phone call during all of this, and didn’t really pay attention to what she was doing, and so I got a rainbow. At least we used up several partial cans of spray paint that had been cluttering the garage for years.

The nine year old, an obsessed Clemson fan, came out and noticed all the purple, and asked if I was going to use some orange. I told her I had no orange and that we were DONE painting.

Last night, I went to the store to purchase some more conduit and supplies to make roll-up sides on the hoop house. I had to buy more spray paint and at first I chose a sedate forest green that would blend in with the garden. I imagined her joy at a Clemson hoop house, and I put it back and chose orange instead.

If it ever stops raining, I will paint the other conduit, add the plastic, and begin planting. Right now I don’t need to protect my plants from the cold but I do need to keep off the constant rain.

These salad greens in my cold frame are absolutely gorgeous, and I plan to have a similar harvest in my hoop house. I already have some baby spinach plants that are in the open garden, being battered by the rain, and I will transplant them into the hoop house where, I hope, they will be as happy as these plants.

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Mary Ann

New Year’s Resolutions in the Garden

Making New Year’s Resolutions for the garden is much more fun than making resolutions in my personal life. No need to give up the cake in the garden; the exercise I get while working in the garden gives me an excuse to eat cake!

As 2018 leaves us, I give you a list to pursue for next year. Some of these resolutions I have already achieved through many years of work, and some of them I continue to pursue, but I will put them all here in case you need some gardening inspiration.

1. Don’t let any weeds go to seed in the garden again, ever.

This is a big one, I know. But every time you see the fronds of the crabgrass plant about to mature enough to spread seeds or the tiny flowers of henbit appear, pull up the plant. Clip off the seed heads and throw them in the garbage if you can’t manage pulling up the weeds. Get my ebook on weed control for more ideas to stop the weeds.

There is a saying, “One year’s seeds makes seven years’ weeds,” and this is true. One mature crabgrass plant can shower 150,000 seeds onto your garden, and so pulling up that one crabgrass plant before it goes to seed can keep you from dealing with 150,000 crabgrass plants in the future.

2. Hoe the soil early and often, sort of like unscrupulous politicians encourage voting.

Don’t wait until the weeds are six inches tall to deal with them. Walk through the garden when the weeds are very tiny, or even before they appear, and lightly disturb the soil with a hoe. This will kill all the weeds and those that are about to appear, with very little effort from you.

Try to do this on the early morning of a dry, hot, day and the weeds will shrivel away in moments.

3. Consider applying mulch to the garden if all this hoeing sounds like too much work.

If you apply it heavily enough, weeds will stay away all season. Consider using heavy-weight, professional-grade landscape fabric if applying mulch made of organic materials sounds like too much work.

Don’t bother with the landscape fabric sold in home centers; it will deteriorate within a few months. I don’t care what it says on the box.

4. Lay out permanent beds in the vegetable garden.

Cultivate this area, and do not walk in it. Leave the paths between the beds for foot and wheelbarrow traffic. Reduce the cost of fertilizers and compost by applying the material only in the beds instead of broadcasting it over the entire garden.

5. Eliminate chemical fertilizers from your garden.

Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants. Add organic matter like leaves or straw, compost, grass clippings, alfalfa meal, blood meal, bone meal, or a general organic fertilizer to the garden. Purchase worms from a bait store or online, and add them to the garden if you don’t have any. Chemical fertilizers damage beneficial soil microbes and add unnecessary salt to the soil. Encourage soil life, and your plants will thrive.

6. Get a soil test every year and follow the recommendations.

Ask for organic fertilizer recommendations in the test results. The soil in my garden is deficient in phosphorus, and isn’t very high in anything. It’s the first year on new ground. Because I know that it lacks phosphorus, I can spend my money on adding phosphorus instead of spreading around the money on all of the soil nutrients. Soil test results also indicate whether or not the garden needs lime, and how much lime it needs.

7. Plan ahead for irrigation.

Nothing needs water in my garden this rainy winter, but July will arrive, and instead of dragging around hoses and using sprinklers that water irregularly, I will set up drip irrigation. Drip irrigation saves water and also reduces disease because it doesn’t wet the plant’s foliage.

8. Try something new.

Whether it’s a new flower or vegetable, starting plants from seeds, learning to root cuttings, managing the weeds differently or using season-extension techniques, begin a new project in the garden. My project will be constructing a low tunnel or hoop house in the garden from plastic conduit and greenhouse plastic.

I will grow lettuces and other crops that benefit from a little warm weather and protection, and then in the summer I will cover it with shade cloth to protect plants from the scorching sun. I’ll update you on this project as it progresses; I plan to begin it this coming week!

Posted on November 26, 2018November 27, 2018 by Mary Ann — 2 Comments

Rowcover laying is difficult enough…then just add kittens!

Our house is new, and so many people have been to the house to paint, complete projects, and work on things. We have had to lock the kittens in the house so they don’t “help” the painters. The kittens, rescued last summer from the Calico garden and tamed by my three children into loving creatures who seek the attention of people, behave more like dogs than any cat I have ever known. They do seem to appreciate our rescue of them from the wild.

A couple of days ago, I worked in the garden putting down row cover preparing the plants for the upcoming cold weather. Ashes and Phoenix chased me into the woods, climbing trees and stalking each other among tree trunks, when I entered to rake some leaves to put on the new asparagus and garlic beds, and they attacked my ankles as they hid in the cover crops.

As I spread the row cover over the broccoli, spinach, and kale plants to protect them from the cold weather, as well as the rain and the wind, the cats wanted to “help” me. They are like helping children, in that their help is often a hindrance. Here is a video of them not helping at all, but having a great time playing in the new tunnels I created with the row cover.

I created the structure of the tunnels by cutting some 12 gauge wire, available at home centers in the chain link fencing section, into hoops about 40 inches long. If you cut them too long, they will flop over, and if they are too short, there will not be enough room for the mature height of the plants.

Then I draped the row cover over the hoops, and I secured it with clothes pins and with metal posts, stones, and whatever else I could find. I need to work on more efficient ways to weight down the row cover. You cannot cut the wire with ordinary wire cutters, although I have read that you can score them with a metal cutting tool and snap them. I purchased bolt cutters to make the job easier.

Row cover protects plants from freezing temperatures, and, depending on the weight of the fabric, may increase the air temperature around the plants by several degrees. The fabric keeps torrential rain off of the plants, and it also prevents the desiccating effects of winter winds. It almost gives your plants a mini-greenhouse environment similar to that of a cold frame, but the fabric allows enough heat to escape so you don’t have to worry about the odd sunny day roasting your plants the way you have to if they are covered in plastic.

Use some season extension techniques and harvest vegetables all year long!