What a day we had the other day installing the plastic on our 50′ x 20′ high tunnel! Thanks to the help of a dozen friends of Where the Redfearn Grows Natural Farms, we succeeded in wrestling the huge sheets of plastic over the hoops. High tunnel construction is not a one person job. Fortunately, through the help of our Facebook page, we were able to get the word out that we needed last minute help. And boy we were encouraged to see the turnout on that windy day!
We were trying to time the high tunnel construction project around the wind because manufacturers recommend installing the plastic when winds are under 5 miles per hour. Too bad it was still early March in Kansas City; we settled for 17 mph instead. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to handle a 60′ x 40′ piece of plastic in the wind! When the plastic was rolled up, it didn’t seem that windy, but once it was fully unrolled, it took all of us just to keep it from flying away.
Here’s a time lapse video of the whole project thanks to Ben Chan!
It was awesome to work together to construct Where the Redfearn Grows Natural Farms first High Tunnel.
We started with a delicious farm breakfast lunch thanks to Sheri that really fueled up the crew for the work ahead.
One fueled up with home made sticky buns and egg and sausage casserole it was time to begin the high tunnel construction. We unfolded the plastic and situated it on the upwind side of the greenhouse being very careful not to turn the plastic into a sail and all get blown off the farm. We then took a baseball and wadded the plastic around the baseball and tied a cord around the plastic to secure it. We did this in three places and then threw the cord over the top of the high tunnel. With a couple people in the middle on ladders and the rest of the people holding the upwind side, we tugged and tugged to get it up over the high tunnel.
Once the plastic was all the way over the greenhouse, the next step in the high tunnel construction project was stretching and anchoring the plastic. For connecting the main piece we used a product called wiggle wire which I would say is well worth the money. Wiggle wire consists of an aluminum U-channel and a zig-zagged spring. You anchor the channel to the greenhouse, stretch the plastic over the channel and insert the wiggle wire back and fort into the channel.
The end wall pieces we installed using batten boards. On the edges of the plastic we rolled the board in the plastic several times before securing to the frame with screws. In the middle of the end walls we just screwed on the 1×2 batten boards to the frame with the plastic in between.
The high tunnel construction project ended with us cutting around the windows and doors which I had installed earlier. See greenhouse end wall construction for more info on that.
We’re glad to have the high tunnel construction project mostly behind us. Now we’re preparing to fill it with thousands of seedlings for our CSA.
End Note: When you do this, make sure you get big enough plastic. We ordered the high tunnel frames with longer ground posts to allow for a higher ceiling, but in the ordering process, the plastic size somehow didn’t get changed. We had to order a strip of plastic to fill in the missing gap. I wasn’t too disappointed, though because was planning to install roll-up curtain sides for ventilation anyway. More on that next week on the blog.
Photos of the high tunnel construction project by Ben Chan and Rod Lentz.