Hoop House Design Update

   We thought that we could get away with it but one fateful day we discovered why you should bury the edges of your hoop house plastic!

   It was just me and the kids here one very windy day, when I looked out the window and noticed the hoop house expanding and shrinking as if it were breathing on it's own. I called Bryon to ask if he had any bright ideas, in girl talk that means come home please, if you can! He thought that we should just tighten up the plastic and secure the logs better.

  I just wish that I had pictures. No sooner than I got up there and started messing with the plastic that the wind jerked it out of my hand. I began shouting at the kids, "All hands on Deck!" every gust of wind rolled the logs back off. In a matter of a few minutes ALL the logs were flung off and the ends of the plastic were reaching for the sky. I really started shrieking then. Kids were running everywhere, on the phone trying to convince their father that it was a real emergency, hauling more logs, staring at me-and doing nothing, crying, pulling the sick kid off the couch- maybe he would have better luck on the phone.

  Some how everyone including the one with the flu (who donned his parka), and the baby,  found a place to lay down on the plastic. "Don't move!" I screeched. In the midst of this my brain was actually putting images together to form a solution, I am amazed at this, to say the least. The connections were made of photos of other hoop houses and the new 100' clothes line we bought the day before. It was quickly found and even faster tangled up in our haste. By now the plastic ripped off the left east corner and a hoop & fitting came undone threatening to summon others to collapse.

   I tied off the end of the rope and Nathanial and I tossed the tangle lump of rope back and forth down the length in a zig-zag fashion, looping the rope around a log, then up and back over...real quick like.

  When we got to the end  I put the collapsed hoop back together (easier said than done balancing on a 5 gal bucket, still 3'' too short) as Nathanial held the rope down. While we were doing this I was wracking my brain for more lengths of rope,oh yes, that stupid fox trap we tried to set last year! At least 20 more feet. Just before I had everyone unlace their boots we found every last inch we needed and made it back to the beginning. By then Bryon got home and helped adjust the plastic and re-staple the end back together and fit the loose hoop tighter together. There was a big mess to clean up inside also. Fortunately though, none of the plants were damaged.

  I just wanted everyone to know that: After learning the hard way (oh, my what if we weren't home!) You really should bury the plastic at the long edges and go ahead and spend $20 more on a few hundred feet of nylon rope to hold it all down. We've had some more windy occasions that I kept watch carefully to see how it would work. Yes, tie it down. Period.