As described in a previous blog post, I built a large hoop house down the length of a pair of the raised beds in my garden, enabling me to significantly extend my outdoor growing season. All summer long the hoop house frames have been left uncovered while daytime temperatures remained in the 70s and 80s. Recently, however, with it now being late autumn and after a weekend of heavy rain that well-soaked my garden soil, I decided to put the cover on the hoop house to preserve the kale, cabbage, leeks, parsley, and other plants growing in this bed. These included some dahlias, the tubers of which hadn’t yet been dug up to store over the winter, this being a necessity here in New England.
But what I hadn’t reckoned with was a sudden and prolonged blast of howling winds off the adjacent ocean, sometimes gusting to 60 mph and lasting for three or four days. These winds made the plastic cover on my hoop house flap like the neglected sail on a badly handled boat. Then finally, sometime around 3 am one morning, the fierce breeze won the battle and completely blew apart the structure that I had covered just ten days earlier.
In the morning I bleakly surveyed the wreckage. Not only had the hoop house cover been lifted off, but the wooded supports bolted to the steel hoop frames had also been broken or fractured. I spent two days rebuilding the structure to make sure it could survive winds as strong or even stronger than what I’d just experienced. Indeed, as I write this post, the wind is gusting to 30 mph with the breeze set to increase to gale force later tonight. Some well-placed ropes tied to post driven deep into the garden path over the cover will hopefully help to do the trick. Being a sailor, I know how to tie ropes tightly to posts.
If the hoop house cover stays on during this upcoming storm, it should remain in place for the entire winter. This will enable the temperature inside it to be a few degrees above the ambient temperature at night but to soar to summerlike warmth during the daytime when the sun is out. Hopefully, this will also keep the winds off the crops, allowing me to grow a large selection of greens and other vegetables well into the New England winter. Recently, I transplanted fava beans, rhubarb chard, bok choy, and napa cabbage into my now repaired hoop house, all of which plants I started indoors. Along with the parsley, sorrel carrots and beets (beetroot) already in the ground. As a bonus, potatoes that were inadvertently left in the ground in this raised garden bed are showing new green shoots. With luck, they may be sufficiently grown to yield new potatoes for Christmas dinner.
Late News!!
The hoop house is still standing after the latest gale. According to the local weatherman, winds gusted to 38 mph.
