before you do, check and see if there's an actual demand for that stuff that late. Around here, even though we have a good indoor market in November that's attended by about 300-400 people, it's hard to sell over $100 of tomatoes and peppers for me. and since it's only once a month, and I can't get them to last until the december one, it's not worth the trouble for me. I do a lot better smoking and drying hot peppers and selling them that way. And bell peppers aren't even selling that great NOW here...I think they're overproduced in our area. Do you have demand for that stuff that justifies the work/cost? I wish we did!

Great point! We also have one indoor market each month in the off season but I will have fall and winter CSAs hopefull every year.
I would love to move the low tunnel from one end to the other end so it covered half the 150 feet at a time. That way I could have some early sweet peppers and basil or whatever in there and then some late ones and tomatoes.

Cheapest way is bulk. It really is quite affordable by 1000 or more foot rolls. If you don't need that much it's not so cost effective. Maybe a local grower would share the bulk price on a roll. I do that sometimes with materials.

I am tall, 6'5 and can work big beds, so the 4 foot hoop bender with a 10' conduit,just like in the Johnny's videos works great. $2.00 a stick of conduit. I have the six foot bender for some wide beds. You can easily bend the conduit to a narrower width with something homemade.Make sure you buy row cover plenty wide to have some to tuck into the ground. My first mistake was to get 83" agribon(luckily not much). It would work for the beds you want but not for my standard beds. I made a few narrower hoops out of 1/4" re-bar with old drip tape over it for narrow beds. That might work for you. I find the frequently recommended 9 gauge wire to be too light except for one narrow row, which is inefficient most of the time. Sometimes I will make an "X" with two pieces of the wire bent into hoops to cover individual vunerable plant or plant hill, like watermelons. It's basically an oversized "hot cap".

I find low tunnels and high tunnels best for in season stuff. You can get the summer crops to go 4 to 6 weeks beyond frost with high tunnels and maybe 2 to 3 weeks in low tunnels (you need the space for getting enough heat in the tunnels to keep things warm enough over night I have found). So for things like peppers and maters they are not particularly effective unless you add heat and supplemental light (when day length goes under 12 hours you will get no flowers or new fruit).

The link I have posted is how we build really cheap hoophouses (under $800 including the greenhouse poly). they are not pretty but they are effective and will last for at least 10 years.

But for cold weather things like kale, lettuce, arugula, etc they are wonderful and perhaps you should think about going that direction.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hoophouse Redux

Again excellent points! Looks like I need to really decide what crops to extend, not just how to build a low tunnel and cost.
Lucy I liked your links. I haven't seen the pipes crossed like that. I just thought they went in straight and then hooked each onto a horizontal top conduit down the line.

How hard is it to use Johnny's bender for low tunnels with 10 foot length pipe?

The problem with extending colder stuff into winter for me is water. It is very dry here and cold in winter so I don't know of any way to water. I do have some CSAs willing to go all year and the indoor markets once a month as I mentioned.

You don't need to do much watering in winter as the plants you are harvesting are dormant and do not need much (about 10% of what they need in the warmer months, unless the ground is frozen, than they need nothing). We irrigate using tanks of water we have in the houses for heat sinks. old water softener liners make great water tanks as do a lot of gallon milk jugs. The liners usually have taps at the bottom that you can hook a drip system to, though the pressure is usually really low for much good.

so the trick with planting is making sure everything is to full size (or the size you want) before your dormant season comes in, which for you is about 3 to 4 weeks away (early November). And to have enough harvest you plant 3x to 5x more than you would during the growing season because once you cut something, it ain't coming back for months.

The bender we use we got for a lot less at an auction and you can get them at any hardware the JSS bender one can make for under $10, if you already have the bits of hardware and the lumber, otherwise around $20. You can also use a tree.

My husband invented the way the metal tubes cross each other and are attached., it's stronger than straight hoops.

Lucy - I may try that crossed-hoop thing, since I don't have Gothic arch. But still looking at building 2-3ft sidewalls to get some height. I like that you just bury the plastic - no wiggle-wire to deal with! But if I make the house taller I may not have enough width to bury. What about hay bales? Or I guess I could just tack them to the tops of the sidewalls, but then it's a pain to vent. I did see a hoophouse on my tour last week that had a hand-operated winch to roll the plastic up and down.

I've got rain barrels, was thinking of putting gutters and downspouts on the hoophouse to collect rain right there and use it for drip, maybe set the barrels up on cinderblocks to get a *little* height. Would require fixed plastic roof, though, and could only roll the sides up to the height of the gutters (and behind the barrels/downspouts).

I'm just looking for season extension - mainly to get an early start, I don't know if I have a market for Oct and later.

i have the johnnys bender for the high tunnel (hoophouse). we used it to make a 12x100 hoophouse. the frame cost about $800. i bought 1 3/8" chain link fence top rails at lowes as well as 1 5/8" ground posts. the film to cover costs at least $200.
i get my greenhouse building supplies (wiggle wire and film) at Puckett's which is about 45 minutes from here. at least no shipping charges. they have a good price on wiggle wire and base.
planting strawberry plugs in it now.

Randy - I may try strawberries next year since the 30 I planted this year have exploded and I have over 100 (I'm sure) near the house. Are you planting in ground or trying "tabletop" strawberries - I thought I might try that with my thinnings in the spring, actually let them produce the same year, though obviously won't be early? Nothing to lose...

i'm planting in the ground in mulch plastic. i'm treating these like annuals so i can grow another crop in the hh after the strawberries are done producing after next spring.

I also think pushing the season up rather than extending in the back is a better idea now. I would really like a low tunnel that could go over 2 beds of greens in winter then move to toms/peps in April. Then back on greens in summer with shade fabric!
Everything is always so hard for me because I do it myself, on rented land, and don't have any building skills at all. Maybe I should have a second secret husband like those men with 2 families.

Extending it forward is better in our area for sales.

Agreed, earlier is better. This time of the years sales are sluggish. Everyone is tired of eating the same stuff every week. When spring rolls around people are tired of eating processed foods, frozen or canned food and are HUNGRY for anything fresh.

This is one of the reasons I have 6 high tunnels and why I work so hard to fill them with everything possible. I am looking at starting my carrots for next year around January 1st. Last year, it was February 1, they weren't quite big enough in May. Luckily I had two 18 gallon totes full of overwintered carrots to sell. My demand for carrots is always higher than I can produce. It is going to be an experiment for sure!

Jay

Jay, what's the secret to growing carrots? I can never seem to grow carrots or radishes, even in soft sandy soil. I know it's not too much N since I planted them this year under some tomato plants, and those fruited.

I won't say I can't grow root veggies b/c the beets I transplanted did well - just not big sellers, the couple I left in the garden are HUGE and woody now, just cutting the greens now and then. But they *did* form - radishes and carrots never do.

too much N will cause carrots to get roots all over the carrot. I got lucky this year, in the hoophouse and had some carrots for the first time in 30 years. Our outside ground isn't sandy enough for them. I know if your ground is rocky, the root crops will try to grow around the rocks, makes really funny looking roots. Have you tried turnips? I can grow them and radishes, IF I get them thinned enough.

Carrots like sand for straight roots but also require huge amounts of water. Radishes are tough for me in summer due to heat but I know another farmer who has them all summer in peat soil with ample water.

For me, the biggest issue with very early season (spring) crops is watering. Raised beds inside a tunnel thaw and dry out while snow is still on the ground outside. I resorted to bringing in buckets of snow and shovelling it over my plants (overwintered spinach in this case) to keep them hydrated until I could get the hose out. As mentioned by boulderbelt, watering is not an issue for fall crops - they don't use much water and their roots systems are well-developed.

Don't worry about your lack of building skills. I don't have any. I wouldn't be able to do all this if my wife wasn't helping me. Yes, we're not exactly a typical couple :)

I have water near by so I run the hose into the hoophouse and soak everything when needed. Since it is a raised bed, I don't worry about overwatering, normally raised beds don't work here (outside) due to proper ground drainage and plenty of wind to dry things out quickly.

I'd worry about snow as water added directly to the plants, but then again I haven't tried to overwinter spinach. You could have a bucket/barrel to shovel it into. Here, normally, we don't get LOTS of snow.

We had almost zero snow last year. Brown almost all winter and drought before and drought in summer.