My buddy Heather made this hoop house . Check out her easy peasy directions.
I’ve made a few hoop houses in my day – some prettier, long lasting, and easier to use than others. But, as temporary hoop-houses go, I think I’ve nailed it. And better yet, for the low-low price of about $22 from your friendly Home Depot guys, you too can make your own Fancy-Schmancy hoop-house too! {I may have missed my calling as an infomercial queen!} 😉
Hoop House Supplies
- -Four 1/2″x10’ PVC pipes
- -Two bags of 1/2″ pipe tube grips
- – Deck screws
- – Two rolls of 2 mil 9’x20′ plastic paint tarp
- – White duct tape
- – An old garden hose you have stashed under your deck/behind your shed. 😉
The first steps to making your hoop house are to make the end parts, which are waaaaay easier than you think it’s going to be. First measure the distance of where you will place the end pieces and, by screwing in two pipe ends to an extra piece of wood, you can create a jig.
Then lay out the plastic (I did this in my living room because even a small breeze would be the equivalent to trying to do this with half a dozen toddlers). Now, cut out around the pvc pipe and leave a 4”-5” border so you can wrap the plastic around the pipe and tape it down. Don’t worry about it being too tight, the plastic will fluctuate with the temperature anyway. Ta-daaaaah. Looks sweet huh? Now slide it out of your jig and make another.
Grab that old hose and a sharp pair of scissors, pat yourself on the back for up-cycling, and get to work cutting that hose into sections of 12” or so. Then cut them down the middle like a hot dog bun. These hose pieces will act like grips to hold the plastic in place, I made 13.
Now it’s time to screw the pipe ends to your wood boxes and put up your two end pieces that you made inside and add another pvc pipe in the middle for support (my boxes are 4’x8’). Oh heck ya, it’s looking awesome already.
At this point I skipped inside to get the tomato plants I seeded in January – whoo-hoo! – to plant in my hoop house. They had way over grown their pots and unless I wanted to re-pot them again, I had to move them outside. Normally, this is about 6 weeks too early, but with my handy-dandy-fancy-schmancy hoop house I can move them out into the garden now.
To add the last 9’x12’ plastic sheet on top, you’ll need a helper to hold it in place, and wedge the hose pieces on to secure them. (If the plastic touches the sharp tops of the tomato cages, like mine do in a few pieces, just put a bit of duct tape on the metal cages to buffer it and protect the plastic.)
The goal is to open the one side of the hoop house for watering and weeding without having to un-do the whole thing (my main gripe with previous hoop houses that I’d made/used) or try to water and weed from one of the ends (which is almost impossible).
For the back side, add several rocks or a heavy pieces of wood on the back end to hold the plastic in place and secure it to the ground. On the front side tape the last ½” piece of pvc pipe to the plastic so you can roll it up and secure it on top for weeding in the garden box.
Now step back, do a little dance, and let’s kick off this gardening season early!
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Christie says
I have wanted to try a similar design that uses chicken wire between the hoops. I love the idea of arches or tunnels in the garden, both aesthetically and for the kids to play.
Would it be possible to make something like this with out the box ? I wonder if you could beat a 12″ length of Pvc in the ground and then attatch the hoop part with pvc connectors ? One day I bought my boys a bunch of pvc with elbows and connectors just to have something to “play” with!
~ Christie
Kevin Wilson says
That’s a nice cloche. I think of a hoophouse as something I can walk into 🙂
Putting your tomatoes out 6 weeks early under a single layer of plastic is very, very risky. I lost about half of mine one year after putting them in the hoophouse 2 weeks early – a hard frost did them in even through the plastic.
Christie: you can hammer lengths of rebar into the ground, then slip the PVC hoops over them to make it without the box.
Practical Parsimony says
That looks easy enough. I always wondered about bending the pvc pipe. I have a swing set that I am going to use this idea to convert it to a mini greenhouse. I really want a door and have a screen door that just needs some plastic affixed and a frame. The wood I have and pipe I have to buy will make a great greenhouse. I did not realize that bending pipe was easy until I read this. I have no idea what I expected. I wish my tomatoes were that big. Right now, they are two inch, six-day old seedlings. Thanks for the excellent instructions. Oh, how long will that plastic last?
Vicky says
That’s technically a low-tunnel, we use those all the time in the PNW and it will help keep our kind of frost off the plants. it could work in other colder areas if you also add a layer or remay (sold at most greenhouse supply or nursery supply stores) on top of the plants as a second ‘blanket’. We have a 30×72 tunnel and this works well for us. The main problem with frost is the dew, it gets on the leaves and freezes which causes damage to the plants or kills them. When plants are under plastic it keeps the dew off and helps raise the temperature up from 5 to 10 degrees on a cold day, or even as much as 40 degrees higher on a sunny day, so you need to keep an eye on the temperature and vent by lifting one side up just an inch or two to provide ventilation. For lots of great info find a copy of Elliot Coleman’s book The Winter Harvest Handbook, he and his wife successfully garden all winter long in high-tunnels & low-tunnels like ours.
Vicky says
Oh, forgot to say that the plastic will last about 2 years, the plastic starts to deteriorate with the solar radiation from the sun. So do the pvc pipes, they get brittle over time, but our small tunnel (10×20) the pipes are still going strong after 3 years and I’m putting on another layer of plastic after the old one blew apart in the winter storms we had.
Heather from MA says
Christie – Chicken wire would work fine but is a bit more permanent than I wanted. But if you have barn/shed to store it so you don’t have to rebuild it every year go for it!! Also, if you don’t have boxes, pound some rebar into the ground to fit the PVC onto. Just make sure you get a big PVC pipe to fit over the rebar.
Heather from MA says
Kevin – you’re right about the hard frost. The day after I put this up we has 26mph winds for two days, rain and SNOW. Aaaah, that’s how spring in New England goes. Luckily, all my tomatoes (and the hoop house) survived – who-hoooo!
(Ha! Just saw your advice on re-bar 🙂 )
Heather from MA says
Hi Practical Parsimony, the plastic won’t last but one season, then I’ll recycle it. The wind whips it around and it gets torn up. If you build this and you will use it year after year, I’d suggest a better quality plastic (Google greenhouse fabric). 1/2″ PVC flexes really easily and the pipe comes in several sizes so just pop into HD and check it out. Good luck with your door!
Heather from MA says
Hi Vicky, 30×72 holy smokes – that’s what us suburbanites dream about! I’ll check out Coleman’s book, I’ve just put it on my Amazon wish list.
Kevin Wilson says
BTW, about materials degrading… Our ordinary construction-grade plastic (not UV stable) lasted about 6 years on the ends of the hoophouse. We had greenhouse plastic for the main walls/roof, and that was only destroyed because when the ends blew out in a spring storm, there was too much stress on it from the wind getting inside. We are rebuilding this year and I plan to use GH plastic on the ends too 🙂
Our Schedule 40 PVC pipe has lasted 10 years so far and shows no signs of degradation. I think having the UV-resistant greenhouse plastic protects it to some extent.
One thing I am trying with this rebuild, is to have a pointed top to the roof instead of a simple hoop. The PVC pipes are pretty flexible and our 12ft wide hoops would bend doooowowwwn in the middle when we had snow. We’d have to run out in the middle of the night to sweep the snow off the hoophouse or it would end up flattened. I’m hoping the pointed top will be stronger and less easy to flatten. You can run rebar through the hoop pipes to make them stiffer – also makes them harder to bend.
Practical Parsimony says
Until this post, I sort of wandered about with visions of what I had seen, dancing in my head and utterly useless. Now, I have a few facts instead of visions. Thanks. Linda
Illini Warrior says
to build a more reinforced and braced PVC framework – and longer lasting …. Genova Plumbing makes PVC fittings in various configuration joints that allows you to build an unitized framework …. it’s mainly for PVC furniture construction but totally a cross over to the greenhouse ….
Becky says
This looks AMAZING. Must try this for our fall crops. Thanks!