The Hoophouse Cometh!

Oh, the avocados we shall grow!

Hey, Facilities Manager here. Yes, I built Tamara a hoophouse: 20-foot by 48-foot. Running water. A sink. Electricity. Nice and warm inside, even on frosty Oregon days.

In plant-nursery speak, it's a "hoophouse."

We wedged the hoophouse -- called so because of the metal hoops and plastic covering; traditional greenhouses are mostly glass -- in between three firs and a white-oak on the eastern section of the property. It rests quietly above the fruit orchard. 

The orchard grass needs a haircut, but it is perhaps too late. I may just leave it for winter.

In mid-April, the construction materials arrived. We purchased the kit from GK Machine in Donald, Oregon, and we could not be more pleased with the service and follow-up. It's interesting that all these goods surfaced with no assembly instructions! Yikes!

By the way, the "hoops" are called "bows" in the industry. Lucky us, our friend Mark at Little Prince of Oregon Nursery in Aurora, Oregon, let us take pictures of his parade of hoophouses. Those pix really helped. Thanks, Mark!

To create the base pad I rented a big tractor with a cultivator attachment. I used it to twirl up the dirt and then push/pull it to create the pad, which is about 24 x 52 feet in size.

Yeah, I cut into the slope. Aside from the tractor/cultivator combo, there was plenty of shoveling. Human shoveling! In the background you may note the chicken pen, which is a small hoophouse itself, I guess, but one to keep the hens dry and safe.

I built a retaining wall to retain the dirt at the lower corner. This was in early May. I recently rebuilt the corner after the dirt had a chance to settle.

Here, looking east, I have installed the four corner posts, using concrete to secure them in place.

Look closely and you will see a stream of gravel flinging out of the trees to the right. In June we hired SiteOne to bring gravel in a big truck and then shoot it about 50 feet onto the dirt pad. It took about 12 minutes. It was loud and amazing. 

Guess who had to rake out that pile? Ha. I really recommend this method. Otherwise, I would have had to move gravel from our driveway 150 feet away with probably more than 100 wheelbarrow-loads! No, thank you!

Jump to July: Oh, yes, the hoophouse was my hobby for five months. Here, I have added the end panels, which are 4 x 8 acrylic-plastic sheets that I cut to fit and then screwed into the aluminum metal tubing. There in the right foreground is the electrical conduit I installed in the ground two years ago in anticipation of this project.

Our Buddha statue keeps an eye on things. He overlooks the fruit orchard but I know he guided me with the hoophouse. During the hot days of summer I concentrated on the water supply and the electrical materials. I decided to withhold the plastic-covering from the hot sun as a way to lengthen its predicted 15-year life-span. And I liked how the structure resembled a whale skeleton.

Finally, one day in late September my neighbor Mike and I spread the single, 6-mm sheet of nearly clear plastic and fastened it in place. It immediately started to heat up in there. Wow!

The plastic is held in place by long clips inserted over the plastic in those aluminum channel strips you can see attached to the wood components.

Kind of cool, eh? This is the gravel floor before our nephew Max raked it flat.

This is after the plastic mesh-flooring was laid. Naw, I didn't use the lawn mower. I need to service the machine and since we are not yet growing anything the hoophouse will make a nifty and dry garage. So the floor is four layers, i.e., dirt (the ground), the same mesh-flooring, the gravel, and the mesh-plastic that you see here.

Of course, Hobbes has to check it out. He likes to visit during our evening walks because it is always warm or at least dry in there. By the way, I built that table as a work-table and then dropped in the sink when I was finished putting things together.

Tamara's collection of pots. She has 2,000 plants listed on her plant data-base for our property, so we know what this pile came from. Whew!

Finally, the hoophouse was an amusing project. I look forward to working in there during the cool, wet months of fall and winter. Although it is large for a non-commercial hoophouse, it feels snug and happy. We plan to bring in a lemon tree and an avocado tree just to see what happens.

That's it for this week at Chickadee Gardens. We appreciate your reading and your comments. Thanks and be well. Tamara here - THANK YOU Facilities Manager for all your amazing work on this wonderful structure. Now let's go grow some stuff!