The very first construction project

I call it March Madness. My first ever (and yet successful) attempt at building a mini greenhouse for the garden. The purchased equipment was lying in the garage since two weeks, waiting for the right weather and conditions to be put to their use. Spring is a beautiful time. Animals and humans both, start coming out of their holes (and homes). I like the warming up exercise weather does in march. 

I started the construction of greenhouse by selecting a location which gets at least six hours of sunlight. It was easy to find. I chose a location from where I could see my hoophouse from my living room and kitchen. It's easy to monitor that way. The first step involved laying two black plastic sheets on the ground at the chosen site. This was to heat up the land and also to inhibit the growth of grass underneath. I then put an old wooden tray on top of it to hold the plastic sheets together. I found the wooden tray in one of the many barns on the property.

The next step was to position the three PVC pipes in place. I used six rebars cut to 8" in length to be inserted into PVC pipes to hold them tightly in the ground. The PVC pipes, if inserted by itself directly in the ground, would have the strength to be in place. I inserted the rebars in the ground first and then put the PVC pipes through them. At times, the PVC pipe would not fit snugly into the rebars. The rebars had rough edges and the PVC pipes were smooth from inside. A little pressure was needed to fit the two together. At other times, I decided to first put the rebar into the PVC pipe before inserting the rebar in the ground. This was a better approach. It was important to have the PVC pipes inserted into the ground properly. Putting the iron rebars in the ground was a work of strength, and I am not the best person to do this (sometimes).

Once the PVC pipes were in place from both ends, they formed a nice semi-circular loop. I decided to tie the pipes together with strings to hold them together in windy conditions. I had a jute string which I tied on the lower half of the three pipes on both sides. Another measure to keep the structure in place was to give them strength from the top with a wooden bar. I had purchased a six and half feet long wooden bar which I screwed to the PVC pipes on the top. Ideally, I wanted to put the wooden bar underneath the top of PVC pipes but due to lack of long screws, I had to do it otherwise. I had screws that were around 4” in height. This height was not sufficient to put both the wooden bar and the PVC pipes together (the combined thickness of both was around 7”).

I then moved forward with the last task of putting the white sheet on top of the structure to cover it up entirely. I had a 10’ X 25’ long sheet. Two of these were needed. I taped the two sheets together first on a flat floor using a duct tape on both sides of the joint to give it extra strength. I lifted the sheet and put it on the PVC pipes to cover them from top.The sides of the sheet was held by two lightweight wooden bars. The purpose of these was to easily roll the extra sheet and keep it folded. (I understand that instead of stones, a wooden bolstering would have been much better. I didn't want to spend too much on buying so many wooden bars). The last part was folding the sheet together, clipping then with tarp clips and putting heavy stones to hold them together against heavy winds. And I was done. FYI, for steps that required strength, it was my husband who held me and the rebars together. 

It has been three weeks since the hoophouse above was built. So far, it has done incredibly well and has survived winds in the region (I mean winds with speeds upto 10-15 miles per hour, not tornadoes) along with periods of rain. I have built this hoophouse as a temporary, cheap and easy-to-construct structure that could provide protection to my container plants in spring and fall. It is not built for stormy weather and heavy snow. It is temporary because I don't know if I will be tilling the soil on this farm next year as well. Occasionally, I need to take care of it and put additional arrangements to keep the sheet in place during gusty winds. To provide ventilation, I open the hoophouse from one side everyday from late morning till evening depending upon weather. This step is a bit manual and I have to attend to the hoophouse twice a day. If you love to take care of plants, you woudn't mind a little bending and some light manual work.