Mini PVC hoop house for our Square Foot Garden!

It's finished!!

I wanted to extend our growing season in our 14' x 4' Square Foot Garden (SFG) this year.
I had seen this method used in the book and on several sites online. We used 1/2" PVC and metal conduit brackets.

You can see the 10' PVC pipes bend nicely to form the support.

See that metal bracket, that's what you want to hold the PVC in place.

We used a coupler to join 2 10' pieces then cut it to length. For us that was 14'.
This is used as a ridge beam to help stabilize the structure.

You can also see in these pictures we needed to replace some of our dividers.
One had cracked and some were never installed in the beginning.

Dale drilled a hole through the ridge piece and the top of each hoop. A nut and bolt were used to attach them.



We also ran one 10' PVC pipe on the center of each side.
This will be used to anchor the plastic to later.

Here it is all ready for the plastic!

For the plastic we used 3 mil sheeting found at Menards. It was 12' wide which worked great.
You can see we did put in the rest of the dividers as well.

To attach the plastic we used spring clamps. This makes it easy to open it up and work in.

To close up the ends I did a bit of folding and clamping. Kind of like wrapping a present.

When I put the plastic on today it was cloudy and about 70° out. I put a digital thermometer inside to see
how warm things were getting. After about 6 hours it was at 99° already! I opened up one side to vent it a bit as I don't need it that warm. There are several things planted and coming up. Four squares of peas, 4 sq Chioggia beets,4 sq daikon radish, 4 sq baby choi cabbage, 4 sq of a variety of lettuces and 4 sq or two spinach varieties. There is asparagus planted there from 2 years ago and it's up 3-4" as well! I think I might harvest a few spears this year!!

I keep you updated on how the hoop house is working and how it holds up to our winds.