Field Notes: Fall 2008

Hanley's Hoophouse.

Hoopty-Do: Hoop House Workshop at Trebuchet Gardens

Come summer, many an Oklahoma gardener would jump through hoops just to cool off.  At Trebuchet Gardens in Norman, Tod and Jamie Hanley use hoops to get the heat when they want it.

Some years, the Hanleys don’t even have a summer garden.  “Usually we do just winter stuff, and try to relax during summer,” says Tod. 

They can do “winter stuff” in their homemade hoop houses.  Over the past several years, the Hanleys have worked out a design that keeps their crops happy, weathers the elements, and costs less than a thousand dollars to build.

They focus on season extension, growing heat-loving crops earlier and later than other growers, and keeping cool-season ones going all winter long.

On September 14, the Hanleys will host a hands-on, on-farm workshop to explain just how they put together their low-cost, high-profit hoop houses.

I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff…

“I’m not an expert on hoop houses,” says Tod Hanley.  “I just tried a bunch and looked at a lot that fell down.”

The concept of a hoop house seems simple: stretch a sheet of clear plastic over a row of hoops.  However, building a house that stays up while keeping costs down can be tricky.

“I had a commercial greenhouse,” Hanley says.  “Bits of it are still in the trees out there,” he grins, gesturing toward a line of trees where storm winds blew the structure.

His latest hoop house designs have withstood 50 mile-per-hour winds, and come cheaper.
When the Hanleys first began looking at hoop house designs 3 to 4 years ago, metal hoops cost $55 each. At that price, the hoops alone for a single house could cost a thousand dollars or more.

Hanley cut corners and costs by buying straight tubing, and then forming it into hoops with a homemade tube bender.  At the time, each home-built tube cost $17, a third of the price of the store-bought hoops.
That put the total cost of the Hanleys’ three 17’ by 100’ hoop houses at $600 each.

Inside the House, Outside the Box

An affordable, workable hoop house design wasn’t the end of the Hanleys’ experiments with season extension. They won a 2007 Oklahoma Producer Grant from the Kerr Center to study the effects of different types of plastic on temperatures and crop yields inside the hoop houses.

In summer, they remove the plastic to keep the house tomatoes from wilting in the heat.  Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, seem to thrive in it. “They’re the size of footballs,” Hanley marvels.

In winter, they raise garlic and onions in low tunnels (hip-high hoop houses) covered with a lightweight, light-admitting fabric called Reemay.

“It vents itself, and bugs can’t get in,” Hanley explains.  “Garlic and onions just love it in there.”

          
Outside the hoop houses, the Hanleys laid black plastic down directly on the ground to kill Bermuda grass. The trick worked, and the warm soil under the plastic was perfect for out-of-season potatoes.

“We get potatoes a month early.  I’ve kept them alive up through December,” says Tod. “It wasn’t on a large scale, but we got paid a dollar a pound.”

Hot Sellers

“Dad had a certified organic farm; he used to do the farmers’ market,” Tod Hanley says.  But he and Jamie have adapted their marketing approach to suit themselves, just like their production methods.
Jamie makes weekly CSA-style deliveries, at $10 to $20 per customer each time.

The Hanleys also sell to local health and natural food stores.  One has a juicer in the deli section, so, Tod quips, “they don’t care if they get ugly beets.”  They also grow highly profitable wheatgrass to feed the juicer.
“The only problem is that we can’t grow enough,” Hanley says.  The property, an old cotton farm, has so little nitrogen in the soil that, he quips, “It won’t grow weeds.”

To add fertility, the Hanleys – who follow organic practices but are not certified – apply manure from a co-worker’s pair of horses. “The horses do the best they can,” Tod grins, but their manure can only build so much soil at a time.

So far, the Hanleys are working about a third of an acre, out of their property’s 40 acres.  Tod says they’d eventually like to expand up to 2 acres.

What to Expect

At the field day, the Hanleys will go through as much as possible of the process of building one of their hoop houses.

“I want people to see just how quick and easy it is,” Tod says.  “We’re going to bend some pipes, put in rebar.  It’ll be very how-to.”

Registration for the field day includes an Oklahoma-grown dinner and costs $10, due by September 11. The event will be held rain or shine; bring a lawn chair and wear outdoor shoes. Register online or by calling Kerr Center at 918.647.9123.

The Kerr Center is sponsoring the workshop together with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, in partnership with the USDA Risk Management Agency.

Download Hoop House Drawings