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The Best DIY Mini Hoop House For A Raised Bed
Here is the best DIY mini hoop house I have built yet. I’ve crafted bunch mini greenhouses and cold frames, taken that info, and made this mini hoop house for my raised bed vegetable garden.

So, why build a DIY mini hoop house? The big answer is that it extends your growing season. You can start seeds earlier in the spring, and grow vegetable later into fall and even winter if you do it right.

I’ve built and made videos about each of the mini hoop house builds I’ve done. And with every build, I’ve learned some more about how to build them.

These season extending rigs are also called a mini greenhouse. I’ve built mine to fit on top of a raised vegetable bed. AND I’ve added a major upgrade to make it easier to lift and open the mini hoop house as it sits on the raised bed.

I’ve had hoop houses slip off the raised bed with high winds, or when you open it, so I crafted a simple solution for that, read below for the details.

Building The Raised Bed DIY Mini Hoop House

I used scrap lumber I had around. I’m all about use what you got. So we had these 2x4s. The mini hoop house sits right on top of the wood sides of the bed. Make your hoop house frame the width of your bed, and however long you want it. Mine is 8′ long. Build the frame so that the long ends of the hoop house sits right on top of your bed, not inside the bed sitting on the soil. This will make it easier to open and close, and it will last longer.

For brackets to hold the wood frame together, I think these metal shelf hangers work great. I salvaged mine from some shelves a neighbor was throwing out. These brackets will last longer than the wood they are holding together. And it is completely fine to use coarse drywall screws to connect them. The screws will last longer than the wood as well.

Some tools and supplies:
- Flip Bit https://amzn.to/2yRrHWY
- Automatic vent https://amzn.to/2JTKROf
- UV Outdoor Rated Plastic Sheeting https://amzn.to/2KzYGlg
I’ve used 3/4″ pvc for the hoop. Use a tape measure to determine how high you want the top of the DIY mini hoop house to be. You can also experiment with a piece of PVC to see how tight of a bend you can do with it.

I was able to take an 8′ piece of 3/4″ PVC and bend it to fit within the 4′ width of the hoop house frame. The peak of the hoop house is 40″ high. I have found a higher peak with steeper sides really helps winter snow slide off the mini greenhouse.

I slid in one of the bent PVC pipes at the very end of the frame. I then placed a 4’x4′ piece of plywood behind the pipe and drew the arc of the hoop onto the plywood and cut it out. It is best to use outdoor rated plywood for this project. If you can’t find or afford outdoor rated plywood, paint whatever wood you are using with outdoor paint after you cut it but before you assemble it.

These automatic thermatic vents are brilliant for a DIY mini hoop house. The vents open and close around 50ºF, and they are adjustable. Do not buy the cheap ones, they will stop working. For this design, I place one high, to let out hot air, and one low, to let in cooler air. I may add two more of these automatic vents, so each end has two of them. When you get a really warm day in spring or fall, the hoop house can heat up right quick.

Use UV rated plastic to cover your greenhouse. If you use inexpensive plastic, you will be replacing it in a few years. And the plastic breaks and splits apart and gets all over your garden. No fun.

I put in a long 1×2 to support the top of the arch. I drill a pilot hole through each pipe and screw the arch into the cross support. I then cover each screw head and the plywood ends with recycled hose so the plastic is not cut open by the sharp edges of the screw heads or plywood ends.

I attached the mini greenhouse to the raised bed with two recycled hinges. Make sure the hinges you use have a removable hinge pin, so you can just slide out the pin to remove the hoop house from the raised bed edge. If not, you can just remove the screws to disconnect the frame from the bed.

This hinge improvement makes the hoop house green house much more stable on top of the raised bed. It wont blow off in a storm. Learn from me…

A metal handle from my box of salvaged hardware makes it much easier to lift the DIY mini hoop house, and makes it easy to prop open. Note how the rig sits nice on the other side of the bed because of the two hinges.

Watch More Of My Hoop House Builds:

Mini Greenhouse Ver 3.0

Mini Greenhouse Repair Fail
April 27, 2020
A Simple Way To Insulate Your Hoop House With This Curtis Stone Video

Rick and I were talking on the GF Radio podcast about the success of his mini greenhouse, and how using 2 layers of plastic, separated by some wood supports, had added an insulation layer. I immediately thought of a video I saw on Curtis Stone’s YouTube channel about how he uses a double layer of plastic in his very successful market garden operation. Here is the video:

Curtis uses a fan to force air between the two layers of greenhouse plastic, which reduces heat loss through the plastic. Think of it as air as insulation. I think you can do this on a small scale, but the key is to pick a fan that works for your size greenhouse. Here is a good starting point for fans you can connect to your greenhouse plastic.

I’m wondering if you have a small greenhouse, could you hook up a bathroom fan you’ve pulled out of a dumpster? I’ve got a few from some renovation projects sitting here looking at me. One of them worked really well on the homemade sap evaporator, but we have more to put to use.

I have built several what I call mini-greenhouses, aka hoop houses, to cover our raised beds. And of course, we have videos about all of them here. Considering the size of my raised beds, 4′ wide x 12′, I’m not sure using a fan to insulate the layers of plastic would be a good use of electricity. Maybe we could go solar with the fan?

I am a big fan of Curtis Stone, and how he shares so much info on his YouTube channel. He also has in-person classes if you are serious about becoming a market gardener. I’ve learned better methods on how to grow carrots and salad greens from Curtis.

He has turned his yard, and those of a few of his neighbors, into farmland, basically. Gone is the grass and instead there are rows of vegetables. This doesn’t go over well with everyone, but I’m all about a smaller lawn.

December 29, 2017
Hoop House Cold Frame #2 – DIY GF Video

This is the second DIY Hoop House Cold Frame we have built in our video series. Easy to build, this mini greenhouse allows you to grow plants in winter. Watch the video here, plans and photos are below as well as links to our other DIY Hoop House Cold Frame Videos.

This cold frame uses a wire mesh that’s usually used for concrete, but it works really well as a cold frame form to hold the plastic up. I like how it works
You can buy this concrete reinforcing wire at a local lumber supply yard. It comes in two thicknesses, you want the thinner gauge wire, the thick wire is too much, I think. This wire also comes in rolls, but the it is a pain to work with. The mesh I bought was 10’ x 5’.

To cut the wire mesh we use a right angle grinder with a metal cutting disc. Be sure to wear ear and eye protection and wear gloves while you’re handling this material, it can cut your skin.

Be sure the cut end of the wire mesh faces the plywood end, else the plastic can get sliced by the sharp ends of the wire. You can put pieces of old garden hose along the end of the wire mesh where the plastic bends over to form the end wall, as well as on the plywood end to protect the plastic from the hard edges of the wire and wood.

But you can build this! It’s not hard and I really like it. Another great version of the hoop house cold frames that we’ve built, we have a whole series of them – link here – and every time we make one we get better and better. The super cool part is that you can extend your growing season in the fall and you can use one of these cold frames to warm up the soil in your vegetable beds in late winter and plant seeds even earlier than you could normally. Cold frame hoop houses are especially good for salad greens, radishes, sugar snap peas – plants that are cold tolerant.

You can use scrap wood to tie the corners together, or use brackets.

The automatic vent that we use is kind of a specialty item but that they’re not that expensive. Here is the link to buy it.

You could put one vent in or you could put in two vents. With two vents you would put plywood at both ends of this cold frame. Having a vent on both sides allows more warm air to exit. Cold frames can get quite hot, you don’t realize how much solar energy the sun has even in the winter. You will need to vent the hoop house, you can go out on sunny days and manually vent it if you want by lifting up the cold frames, but I’m not there all the time. So I like the automatic vents.
Have you made a cold frame? Do you have anymore questions? Pease leave them in the comments below.

My cold frame experiences have been greatly influenced by these books by Eliot Coleman and Niki Jabbour.

Four-Season Farm Year Round Vegetable Gardener (affiliate links)

Watch more of our hoop house cold frame plans videos here.

PVC Cold Frame Hoop House #3 – DIY GF Video

February 7, 2015
PVC Cold Frame Hoop House #3 – DIY GF Video
Easy to build PVC Cold Frame Hoop House is a mini greenhouse that allows you to grow salad greens and cold tolerant vegetables into the winter, and get a head start on early spring planting. This hoop house is more resistant to heavy snow than our previous versions, listed below.

This is version 3.0 of our cold frame hoop house. What I like about this one is that it’s a taller than our previous cold frames, so you could start to grow tall plants like kale or start sunflowers earlier in the spring.

A couple things to keep in mind while you’re building this hoop house, especially if you are using this on raised beds. You want this hoop house to fit just inside the walls of your raised bed. I made this mistake when I made my first hoop house, I didn’t measure how wide my raised bed was and the cold frame didn’t fit exactly. Experience has once again taught me something. The frame fits just inside the wooden sides of the raised bed and it doesn’t have to have a super tight seal with the soil, you do want some air exchange in and out. What the hoop house is doing is moderating temperature. When it gets really cold outside, it’s going to be cold in there but it will extend your growing season.

Consider planting some cold tolerant greens in August, I like a salad green mix that sold by Fedco seeds. They have a fall and winter lettuce greens mix and that’s worked really well for me.

One thing I did not mention in the video is that where the plastic meets the plywood ends of your hoop house, the plywood can cause the plastic to tear and so you might want to put something soft around the edge of the plywood. If you have some old garden hose you could split the garden hose open and run that along the edge of the plywood and that would go a long way toward making the plastic such that it wouldn’t rip.

For this 8′ x 4′ cold frame I used:
- Two 2×3 8′ long studs
  Two 2×3 studs cut to 45″ long
  One 1×2 8′ stud, you could also use a 2×2
  4 metal angle iron brackets
  3 pieces of 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC cut to 6′ long
  1 1/4″ and 1 5/8″ drywall screws
  Two pieces of 4’x4′ thin plywood. You could also cut down a 4’x8′ piece.
  3 or 4 mil plastic, i used a roll of 10′ x 25′, which is enough for two hoop houses.
  Two thermatic vents, available here http://amzn.to/2Cg81fg
  Staple gun
Using the angle brackets, build a 4′ x 8′ wood frame, make sure the shorter pieces of 2×3 wood (the 45″ pieces) are inside of the larger pieces, so the outside dimensions are 48″ x 96″

I cut the plywood ends to match the arc of the pvc hoops. Take one of the hoops and curve it into the wood frame at the end of the frame, and use this to sketch the arc on the plywood ends, it does not have to be perfect.

My hoop house cold frame gardening has been greatly influenced by Eliot Coleman and Niki Jabour.

Four-Season Harvest The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Watch all of our hoop house videos here.
November 6, 2014
Hoop House Greenhouse FAQ – GF Radio 319

Build your own hoop house greenhouse is today’s topic. Matt tells us how to build a greenhouse out of pipe and plastic. He is building a hoop house greenhouse using off the shelf items to save money and its going well. Matt shares what he has learned in building a greenhouse that you can apply when you build your hoop house.

Matt is using fence pipe bought at the home improvement store. He says there are lots of good kits out there, but it gets expensive quickly, and half the fun of a hoop house greenhouse is in planning and building something you designed yourself. Matt saved quite a bit of money by going the DIY route and based his ideas on those of Eliot Coleman.

Matt’s Hoop House GreenHouse photo ©2013 Matt Cuba

Why Build a Hoop House Greenhouse?

The motivation was to have better foods in the winter than is available at the grocery store in winter, as hoop houses allow you to extend your growing season.

Siting the greenhouse is important, Matt built his on a slight slope that faces south, and did a bit of leveling of the foundation. He used fence pipe driven into the ground to accept the top fence rail pipe that he had curved into the hoop shape. He chose not to use PVC pipe, thinking the metal pipe would be more sturdy. The curved pipes are spaced 2′ apart. The jig he built to curve the pipe is a simple plywood curve, or a wood form. He found that curving the pipe to something slightly larger than the desired curve allowed the hoops to be slid into the base pipes with tension, helping to keep the pipes in the base pipes.

Matt has two large blue water barrels in the hoop house to create a thermal mass. The barrels absorb solar heat during the day, and give off that heat at night, helping to keep the hoop house greenhouse warmer. He decided to not use regular clear plastic, and opted for the UV stable greenhouse plastic available at greenhouse supply stores. He also used a channel system called willow wire to hold the plastic onto the hoop house frame. You can follow Matt and his adventures on Twitter here .

November 20, 2013
Hoop House Plan You Can Build

A PVC hoop house design by J.B. uses PVC pipe, plywood, & plastic to make a simple greenhouse. J.B. based this on our Hoop House Plan video, and made it taller for tall plants. Perfect for seed starting tomatoes or even corn.

Just wanted to drop you a line to say Thanks for your video’s on the hoop house. [Here’s a photo of] the hoop house I had built for our raised beds. I don’t have the vent in yet as I’m still waiting for it to get delivered. I did modify the design a bit. I made mine a bit higher to try and grow some taller plants and I used wood at both ends and ran a 2×3 spine down the middle and attached the hoops to it with the same C clamps. We had some winds the other night with a couple gusts to near 50MPH and it stood like a rock. Cant wait to get planting under it.

With this taller hoop house cold frame, it could blow over with high wind, but J.B. secured it with C clamps to the raised bed. You could also use spring clamps or tie it down with strong rope to some screw eyes on the raised beds.

I also like the trellis J.B. has built at the end of the raised bed using some leftover fence material.

I just put some kale and mustard transplants into our hoop house cold frame, i’m always amazed at how much warmer it is inside the hoop house cold frame vs. the outside temperature.

Below are some of our Simple Hoop House Cold Frame videos, Let us know your questions or thoughts in the comments below:

Click here to watch our How To Build a Hoop House Cold Frame Video

Click here to watch How to build a cold frame video.

April 15, 2013
Seed Starting in a Hoop House Cold Frame : DIY Video

Starting seeds in a hoop house cold frame is like putting a greenhouse on your vegetable bed. The hoop house warms the soil and then you drop seeds right into the soil. No transplanting or grow lights, no transplant shock. This is our cheap PVC hoop house that can be made with salvaged or recycled materials, and then you can grow vegetables in the hoop house. What I love is how the cold frame warms the soil to 15F above the ambient soil temperature.

Plants that do well for seed starting in a hoop house are those that are cold tolerant. What the cold frame offers is a warmer soil and air temperature, which aids in germination. Yes, peas can be planted in snow, but they germinate much better in slightly warmer soil, same for lettuces and cabbages like kale, just a bit warmer and they sprout better. For this video I put sugar snap pea seeds in and radish seeds. Radishes are one of those seeds that are kinda fail-safe, so you feel ok even if some of the other plants didn’t take as well.

We have several videos on how to build a hoop house cold frame and how to use a plastic greenhouse like this, here is the video of us building our first cheap hoop house. I think its key to have the thermally controlled vent, if it gets too hot, you might consider putting a vent on each end of the hoop house. The PVC we use in this cold frame could be salvaged or recycled from another project or job site. The plastic we use is 3 mil plastic from the hardware store. With care this plastic will last several years. In the middle of summer, I hang my hoop house on the back side of the woodshed, and the plastic stays in good shape for a few years.

Salad Greens Grow Really Well In A Hoop House

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April 9, 2013
Repair Of Our Hoop House Cold Frame : GF Video

Setting up our simple cheap hoop house greenhouse for seed starting. This PVC hoop house cold frame works well for us and it was easy to build, here is the video of us building our the hoop house. The hoop house greenhouse allows you to get a head start on planting vegetables and seed starting. We started this in February to start warming the soil. This can be made for free if you find some scrap leftover lumber and PVC pipe. This plan uses short lengths of PVC pipe, which you may find laying around your yard, or your neighbor’s yard.

My hoop house plans for this mini greenhouse are simple. Some 2x4s, some PVC pipe, and a piece of plywood. The thermal actuated vent keeps the hoop house from overheating. Link to buy the thermal greenhouse vents

I use 3 mil clear plastic from the hardware store, it lasts a few years with care. I hang our mini greenhouse on the back of a shed when i am not using it. To attach the plastic to it, I fold the plastic over on itself and use lots of staples. You could also use a piece of lath or thin wood to hold the plastic to the wood. For the ends, I staple the plastic to the plywood end with the thermal vent and then cut off the excess plastic. For the other end of the cold frame hoop house, I simply bunch up the plastic and staple it to the 2×4.

After a few days on your vegetable bed, this portable greenhouse will start warming the soil. Its amazing how warm it is inside the hoop house compared to the outside temperature. We have a video showing how a hoop house greenhouse can defrost your garden soil coming soon.

In the video, the plywood I used for the end of the greenhouse, OSB, is not the best kind of plywood for outdoor uses. Use a better piece of plywood and paint it with a few coats of latex paint, it will last much longer if its painted.

Click here to watch our How To Build a Hoop House Cold Frame Video

Click here to watch How to build a cold frame video.

Learn how to grow food year round, read Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest book and Nikki Jabour’s Year Round Vegetable Gardener.

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Do you use a hoop house greenhouse? let us know comments or questions below:

April 2, 2013
Cold Frame & Hoop House How To With Nikki Jabbour : GF Radio 258

Learn how to build a cold frame and extend your growing season with Nikki Jabbour, author of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener. We talk with Nikki about how to use a cold frame to start plant early and keep your harvest going into winter, even in Canada! ( Nikki lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, btw )

Recycling stuff you were going to throw out into cloches is a big light bulb moment for Eric, and the fact that holes in your lettuce greens at a store or restaurant means that bugs were on them, and that is a good thing, meaning it probably wasn’t sprayed with insecticide, is the other lightbulb moment for Eric.

We talk about ways to extend your growing season without spending a lot of money on fancy greenhouses, in other words, how to grow vegetables in the snow. The cool thing about Niki’s outlook is that its based on her learning as you go method, much like gardenfork. Simple and easy, made out of recycled materials.

I’m interested in the idea of using newspaper hats as a simple cloche to protect plants for frost. stay tuned.

Read our review of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener here

Order Nikki’s book from Amazon here. (affiliate link)

Watch our how to build a hoop house video here.

Watch our how to build a cold frame video here.

A big thank you to Jean Ann Van Krevelen for introducing Niki to us, what fun.

June 18, 2012
Cold Frame Hoop House Plans and Update

Here are some hoop house plans and photos of the small hoop house we use for cold weather greens. We had a really warm weekend last week, so i pulled out the cold frame hoop house that we built in the How to make a hoop house cold frame video here. I put in a mix of salad greens and mesclun mix, place a wireless thermometer in, and left it to grow.

I’ve gotten many requests for plans for the cold frame hoop house, you can get more info on all our hoop house cold frame plans here. Below i’ll post a few key photos to guide you along. This Cold Frame Hoop House plan is perfect for our raised garden beds.

These hoop houses work really well with our raised vegetable beds. You can watch our How to Make Raised Garden Beds video on our site here.

build a frame that will fit in your garden bed with 2×4 lumber

use narrow diameter PVC to arch across the frame

use electrical pipe holders to secure pipe arches

cut a plywood end that matches the arc of your hoop house cold frame. cut out a hole for the thermatic vent in the plywood

attach the plywood to one end of cold frame

the view of the cold frame hoop house from inside.

The cold frame hoop house fits just inside the raised bed. nice.

If you want to learn more about growing vegetables year round read Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest book and Nikki Jabour’s Year Round Vegetable Gardener.

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March 29, 2010
The Mini Greenhouse Repair Fail

You’ve probably seen one or three of my mini greenhouse plans videos. The most recent one talks about the complete fail of the plastic cover in the middle of winter. Here are the photos that show my attempt at repair before the complete breakdown of the covering.

My big mistake 4 months prior to the fail was to put screws through the top of the PVC pipes, and then lay plastic sheeting over the screw heads. Who knew that the metal screw head would eventually puncture through the plastic, starting as all holes do, small.

Prior to the small hole caused by the screw, all was good in the mini greenhouse. These rosemary plants had over-wintered well. Not so well after the plastic ripped though.

My attempt at repair was to use packing tape over the screw head and the splitting plastic. I knew it was not a 100% guaranteed repair, as it was cold out when I applied the tape. I don’t think other tape would have worked either. The glue on tape is not cold friendly.

That small hole grew through the winter, with the weight of heavy wet snow, and lots of wind. Then we had even more wind and that caused the complete tearing of the mini greenhouse cover. Darn. It sat for a while before I was ready to walk over and deal with it. Besides, there was still 18″ of snow on the ground. I knew all the plants inside the hoop house were toast.

Going forward I will use UV rated greenhouse plastic, I’ve seen some that is reinforced with netting in the plastic. AND I will screw the screws into the PVC starting underneath it, through the wood crossbeam, then into the pipe. If you have some old storm windows on hand, you can make a neat cold frame with them.

In the meantime, check the video where we walk through the fail:

May 3, 2017
Mini Greenhouse Build #1 – GardenFork.TV
This is the first mini greenhouse build we did and we learned a lot. We have built several more since, and they are great garden season extenders. I start my salad greens early and can keep kale growing into winter with a PVC mini greenhouse. Watch the how to video:

A few tips on the Mini Greenhouse Build
- You can use 3 mil clear plastic from the hardware store.
- Buy the most flexible PVC tubing you can find.
- Be sure to have plenty of staples for the staple gun.
- Use at least one thermal vent.
You can get a UV resistant greenhouse plastic, but I don’t. My thinking is a tree branch or dog is probably going to crash through the mini greenhouse before the plastic is broken down from sunlight. Be sure to double over the plastic where ever you are stapling it to the frame. Where the plastic wraps over the edge of the plywood end, you can run duct tape or a slit rubber hose over it to reduce the chance of tearing.

There are several kinds of PVC pipe available. Go to your local hardware store and test the different kinds to see which bends well for the size greenhouse you are building. Pick up some pipe holder brackets from the electrical department of the store to hold the PVC to the wood frame.

Buy more staples then you think you need. I always run out! Hammer in any staples that don’t go in all the way themselves. Fold over the plastic where ever you staple it to reduce tearing.

Thermal vents are key here. The mini greenhouse build can overheat easily. I use at least one vent, if you use two, put one high and one low on opposite ends.
Buy the vent here.

If you are building this to sit on top of a raised bed, make the dimensions slightly smaller than the raised bed size, so the hoop house will drop just inside the borders of the bed, makes it much easier to deal with that way.

Four-Season Harvest The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Our cold frame hoop house greenhouse is based on those built by Eliot Coleman in his book, If you follow the procedures outlined by Elliot in his book, you can harvest food all winter. nice. We also learned a bunch from Nikki Jabour’s book. (affiliate links)

Hoop House Cold Frame #2 – DIY GF Video
March 7, 2016
Mini Greenhouse Seed Starting Pots

We have all sorts seed starting pots, but how about seed starters that have their own roofs? A neat idea that includes a solution for plastic bottles that function as a mini greenhouse for each seed starting pot. Jeremy sent me this photo and email about making these mini greenhouses with recycled bottles.

“I just want to thank you for all you have done for everyone over the years. You have been a huge help to me and an inspiration since last spring when I started gardening again after the loss of my mother.It was the best therapy I could ever hope for and You helped me more than you would ever imagine. Now I want to try and help you out if possible.

While starting my seeds this last week I had come up with a cheap way to make a little green house by just getting a 2 piece disposable baking pan with large dome lid for a dollar at the dollar store and the smaller peat pots that you could fit 16 of them into each pan. Well I had a little too much moisture in there and had to open it up and kill the fungus on a few of the pots and it got me thinking.

I drink bottled water a lot and I grabbed an empty bottle cut the top off and it fits perfectly over the peat pot and has a resting ledge on the ribbing of the bottle where it stops making each pot have it’s own personal mini green house.

You can set them on a window sill if you are low on space and line the whole thing with them. If it works out well I was thinking it would also be a good way to keep infestations contained to one or two seedlings instead of a whole tray. Here are some Pictures in case you wanted to see it and give it a try. It’s a great way to recycle some of the water bottles and keep them out of a landfill. “

Beautifully simple and something I had never thought of. I am always wanting to over-engineer everything, and make it bigger than it needs to be. A big thank you to Jeremy for taking the time to send that. Do you make seed starting pots? Let me know in the comments below!

If you live in the northern areas of the world, its time to start seed starting pots with sugar snap peas, and then some tomatoes too. Below are links to check out our how to make seed starting pots and how to start seeds videos.

March 2, 2015
Should You Quit Facebook? GF Radio 469

Eric & Will get an email asking should one leave Facebook.

Will and Eric,

I respect you both highly and love following you both.

That said, I have always been suspicious of FB and was going to pull the plug regardless of the latest news.

My only hesitation is being able to continue to follow both of you which I know I can get through podcast and YouTube. I suppose I can still go to your respective Websites? The GardenFork discussion group has really been valuable for me.

I would truly appreciate your respective thoughts.

Lifehacker has some good articles on how to secure your data and still use Facebook. The simplest ways to limit how much data FB collects is to not hit the Like Button or Comment on anything. And don’t post anything. Just scroll through. Use Facebook on your computer, not your phone. The app can collect all sorts of data.

We then talk about tapping sugar maples for maple syrup. Here’s one of Eric’s videos about how to tap trees for maple syrup.

Will asks Eric his preferences about hoop houses vs greenhouses. Here’s a vid on how to build a mini greenhouse, aka hoop house.

March 27, 2018
Simple Techniques To Garden Almost Year Round In This Book

Every year I try to extend my vegetable garden season into winter, and get a head start on the spring season while there is still snow on the ground, with mediocre success. This is going to change now that I am re-reading Niki Jabbour’s Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, an excellent read on garden season extenders, as well as a good basic how to grow vegetables kind of book.

After the first time I read this book, I interviewed Niki on the GardenFork Radio podcast, listen here.

I talk about it in this video, but my mini greenhouse hoop house had a huge fail this winter. The kale, salad greens, and rosemary I was trying to overwinter crashed and burned. Some lessons learned there.

Snow Season Gardening

But I was re-inspired to just plant more vegetables this summer season AND get better at growing vegetables in winter. Or at least growing them later into fall. Niki has a bunch of methods here that are simple and easy to do. You don’t need lots of equipment. You might need lots of mulch and straw, but that’s easy to get.

Like a lot of how to grow vegetables books, this one goes through different vegetables, but also has a chart of how to start them early and grow them late. Niki made me realize I could sow successions of beets, not just one crop. Lightbulb goes on.

As we all know, I am not one for planning, but the ‘plan your garden’ part of this book got me thinking I should plug some dates into my calendar with reminders to get stuff started. A goal is a second crop of sugar snap peas in the fall. Watch our growing sugar snap peas vid here. And a bunch of salad greens.

Carrots have not been great in the garden, Niki has inspired me to try again. Buy Niki’s book locally or order her book here.

Other vegetable gardening posts & vids you might like:

DIY Cold Frame From A Recycled Window – GF Video

Cardboard Seed Starting Pots – DIY Video

Pallet Compost Bin Video

May 24, 2017
Grow Salad Greens In Fall And Winter – GF Video
You can grow salad greens in fall and winter, its not rocket science, even I can do it. Watch the video and read on below:

Couple of key things to grow salad greens in fall and winter
- Plant cold hardy lettuces, mustards, kale.
- Use a mini greenhouse
- Start seeds earlier than you think
- Plant in your sunniest raised bed
Luckily, most salad greens don’t do well in hot weather, they actually like cold weather. You have that going for you when you want to grow greens in winter or fall. I usually have too many packs of mescluns, greens, etc, so I drop them into a shallow row right next to my soaker hoses [video here]. Fedco sells fall and winter salad seed mixes, which make this even easier.

Be sure the seed rows are on the sun side of the soaker hoses. The way my raised beds are oriented, one side of the hose gets more sun than the other, so I drop seed on that sunnier side.

The other key ingredient here is a mini greenhouse, aka hoop house, to extend the growing season [how to videos here]. The mini greenhouse will keep the plants warmer in the fall and early winter months, and can extend the season greatly.

If you don’t have a mini greenhouse, you can surround the salad greens with hay bales. Lay an old storm window over the bales. The bales will hold in the heat nicely.

In the northeast U.S., where we are, the salad greens will eventually freeze, and stop growing. But if you can manage not to let the frost melt and drown the plants in late winter, you can get the salad greens to start growing again. They may bolt, so plant new seed as well.

How do you extend your growing season? Let us know below.
September 14, 2016
Grow Lights, Axe and Mouse Issues – GF Radio 396

Rick joins Eric to talk about grow lights, Rick bought these LED grow lights and likes them.

We move on to mousetraps and what works. Here is the Victor electronic mouse trap Eric uses.

Rick has built the hoop house cold frame with the wire mesh support. Here is the link for the thermatic vent we talk about for the hoop house.

Here is the viewer mail from the show:
I’ve been meaning to drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy your podcast, videos and emails. I feel like you and Rick are old friends who keep me company out in the garden and when I’m doing chores around the house.

And, please stop apologizing for geeking out. I found your podcast while searching for Evernote podcasts years ago. I’m an avid gardener and dog person (Golden Retriever) and my husband loves to cook and do DIY projects. Our house was built in 1919 and we put an addition on in 2001, so we have taken on a lot of projects. I get so much more from your podcast than what I was searching for originally. Keep up the great work! Susan

HI GUYS, So stupid question here…I don’t have a food processor because after 12 years my Hamilton beach finally went out on me. I want to make the kale pesto, but how could I get the same consistency for pesto? I’ve never made pesto before, but we sure would like to try it. Keep up the great videos…we love the show!!!
Andrea in Oregon

Hey Eric! I stumbled upon your site a couple years ago while recuperating from blowing out my Achilles tendon…and watching your videos was and is better than anything on TV. I simply cannot wait for each and every video. Also? I purchased the artisan bread book (a year ago) and I make bread often. And I’m on a hunt for old bricks because…hello brick pizza oven. Thanks again… Oh and I think you should make soap. I’ve been making several batches lately but I think your viewers would like that. Peg.

Hi Eric,

Apparently seeds will germinate faster after the husk has been scarred in some way. Could you do a video with some experimentation regarding this?

Regards, Francois

October 20, 2015
Letter Writing and Diners – GF Radio 392

Erin of The Impatient Gardener joins us to talk about the lost art of letter writing, she is reading Dear Friend and Gardener, a collection of letters between two friends. We ponder whether we have friends to write to, and then what are their mailing addresses?

We touch on Mail Art, which Eric has created over the years. Love the photocopier.

Is summer over? Erin thinks this winter will be mild because of the El Nino patterns. Despite being on the coast of Lake Michigan, she hopes less snow. We’ll see.

Erin is getting a new iPhone, and this starts a conversation on waiting in line for new phones, and then waiting in line at a restaurant. Which brings us to diners.

Eric has a fondness for the Waffle House, their super friendly staff and the neat system they have for tagging which dishes get what food as it is prepared.

GardenFork loves diners. agreed. Eric has the Collins Diner near him in Canaan, CT . Do you have a favorite diner? Let us know in the comments below.

When is frost coming near you? Eric needs to maintain his weather station provided by Allison House.

If you want to extend your season, you can build one of our hoop houses.

We geek out for a minute as Eric has been tweaking the website to load faster. Eric has mirrored all the images for the site onto Amazon’s Cloud service. We then go off on a tangent about computer security.

We talk about our video on natural weed control, we filmed this at our neighbor’s house, they have a really nice garden. Erin uses comfrey as a mulch around tomatoes, and makes a tea out of the leaves as well.
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September 18, 2015

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