Airing Out the Hoophouse

I've talked a lot about our hoophouse.  We are quite proud of it.....mainly that we were able to put it up all by ourselves!  (Well, we did have some help from our son-in-law. )  

We bought it from American Plant Products, a wholesale company in Oklahoma City.  They make a delivery to Stillwater every week, mainly to OSU, I think.  When we need potting soil or pots or plant stakes or whatever, we usually just go down there and pick them up ourselves and use the trip as an excuse to eat at PF Changs or one of our other favorite places.  But, I digress.  The hoophouse was another story; we had to have them deliver it. 

When it arrived, all it consisted of were these huge metal arches.  Tom and our son-in-law set these in concrete, built a frame around the bottom, added 2X4s midway up the sides to attach the plastic to and covered it with these huge sheets of plastic.  Let me tell you....you do not want to try this on a windy day.  You'd be surprised how easily the wind can catch a big sheet of plastic and lift you off the ground!

Last summer, the hail storm punched some holes in the plastic, but this did not seem to hurt much.  We were still able to grow lettuce in there all winter.  Now that the weather is warming up, we have to have a way to cool it off inside.  We do this by rolling up the sides.  See the picture below:

The plastic is attached to a long metal pole that is used to role it up.  It is amazing how easy it is to do this.  I was able to role it up this far alone.