We're setting the stage for growing vegetables throughout our Maine winter with the installation of a hoop house alongside our existing garden. Thanks to York County Master Gardeners for constructing it as part of our joint workshop series.

This hoop house is a modified Gothic-arch high-tunnel design oriented roughly east/west and is light weight and movable (a movable greenhouse allows soil to be restored by sun, rain, and deep-rooted cover crops). Row covers of translucent fabric, such as Agribon or Remay, will be laid over a wire armature to offer an additional layer of cold weather protection.

We'll likely start with greens like spinach, arugula, lettuce, mustard, or mesclun, but could expand to carrots, endive, mache, minutina, and turnips. The high tunnel hoop house might also be used in the summer for heat-loving crops such as tomatoes, melons, eggplant, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and peppers.

Since it is light weight, we will be able to move the hoop house to allow the soil where the greenhouse spent the winter to receive natural rainfall which will prevent any build up of soluble salts.

Resources

• 4-page hand-out from the 2013 Four-Season Gardening workshops
• Extending the Garden Season (with video embedded; extension publication 2752)
• Extending the Gardening Season Using Raised Beds (standalone video)
• A Garden for All Seasons by Eliot Coleman