Winter can be a tricky time to grow vegetables. You have to fight with cold weather, frost, snow and were we live boat loads of rain. I wanted to keep our vegetable production going into winter so I decided to install hoop houses over our raised hugul beds. Hoop houses have several benefits. They help retain heat, keep snow and frost off of your vegetables and provide a nice barrier to keep pests out. It’s almost January and we are blessed to have beets, broccoli, chard, carrots, kale and cabbage growing:
Don’t those lettuce greens look scrumptious? Putting together the hoop houses was super easy. I purchased cheap ($2 each) PVC pipe from the big box stores and bent the PVC to form a U. The ends were placed inside each bed and covered with 4mil plastic. To keep the plastic from blowing away I secured it with a few spare bricks. Here is the end product:
The plastic and PVC set me back about $25. With current organic produce prices the 30 heads of lettuce I’m growing (grown from $6 worth of seeds) will net me $29 in the end. Not too shabby! Should be able to start harvesting greens in 2 - 3 more weeks.