Hoop house home for growing veggies
CATAWBA – When is a greenhouse not a greenhouse? When it’s a hoop house, of course.
On March 19, two growers who produce greens despite the weather showed how they use low and high hoop houses or tunnels.
Kathy O'Hara shows workshop participants how she uses a high hoop house at the Catawba Sustainability Center to extend the growing season for greens. Photo by Ann Harrell
Kathy O’Hara of Greens to Go and Betty Bailey, a Catawba resident, both sell their greens and other produce at the Catawba Valley Farmers’ Market and other area farmers’ markets. Bailey’s high hoop house is at the former Catawba Hospital Farm on property now known as the Sustainability Center. It is a project of Virginia Tech Earthworks, which sponsored the workshop.
An advantage of hoop houses over more traditional greenhouses is the plastic fabric sides over the curved bones of the structures can be raised or lowered to regulate temperature from passive solar heat filtering through.
Bailey uses a low hoop tunnel, while O’Hara grows her greens in a high tunnel hoop house.
Kathy O'Hara of Greens to Go, kneeling at left, shows how she starts plants to grow in a high hoop house at the Sustainability Center in Catawba. Photo by Ann Harrell
Rita Burge of Sedulous Seed of Catawba, another vendor at the Catawba Valley Farmers’ Market, explained a different method of constructing low tunnels, and provided a material list and a diagram of hers.
Producers and people who want to grow vegetables attended from Craig, Botetourt, Glenvar, Bent Mountain, Montgomery County and even one participant from Northern Virginia, who is a Virginia Tech student. The workshop started out at the Catawba Community Center, formerly the community’s school which is now owned by Roanoke County Parks & Recreation.
In her high hoop tunnel at the Sustainability Center, participants saw O’Hara’s varieties of greens, with peas and other vegetables just breaking through the mulch.
O’Hara also showed how she uses a multi-purpose culvitating tool, her watering system and how she starts seeds in a less-expensive way instead of using grow-pots.
She demonstrated raising and lowering the side curtains for controlling the temperature in the tunnel. Another advantage of using hoop houses, O’Hara said, is the tunnel protects plants from insects, deer and other critters who love greens and tender crops, as well as weather extremes.
Hoop houses extend her growing season, O’Hara said.
At Bailey’s farm on the Blacksburg Road, workshop participants saw her low tunnels and had the opportunity to ask questions. Anyone who wanted to helped construct a low hoop tunnel.
For more information on how to build a hoop house, see Hoop House Timelapse Construction on the Virginia Tech Sustainability Center’s site, http://vtrc.vt.edu/catawba
– Ann Harrell also contributed to this article.
