- Let's go over how easy and cheaply
you could build these low tunnels
out of just DIY materials
you could buy at any hardware store.
Before we go over how simple it is to build these,
let me just tell you exactly why I'm using them.
In both of these tunnels here,
I have frost fabric,
which is acting as a sort of insulative layer.
Underneath this fabric,
I have two rows of peppers on this side
and one row of peppers on this one.
The idea behind this
is that as you could see in San Diego here
on the coastal climate,
we have this period of the season
called May Gray and June Gloom
where it's just gray overcast days for a couple months.
It just doesn't get hot enough
for the peppers to really thrive.
So by building these little low tunnels,
I'm helping to trap all the heat that I can.
I'm also stopping all this cool coastal wind
from chilling them out too much.
So now let's go over how to build these.
And also, by the way,
I should mention that you don't have to just use this.
You could use frost fabric,
`you could use bug nets,
you could use shade cloth.
These do it all.
So let's go over how to build them right now.
Before I show you the exact build of this tunnel right here,
I forgot to mention some important considerations
during the process.
If you live somewhere where you do get seasonal rains,
especially this time of year,
this is what happens if you build a tunnel like this.
The water will pool on top,
and it will actually weigh down the fabric
and even potentially collapse your tunnel.
So if you live in an environment where you do get rain,
you don't wanna build a square top tunnel
like I have here,
but I don't get rain basically from April through December.
So it's not really a concern for me.
So let me show you the hoops over there
and how they shed water
because that's gonna be what you wanna do.
So here we are by the rounded top tunnels,
and watch what happens when I hit with water.
The water can just freely flow off the sides
because there's nothing really to capture it
and retain it on top,
which will lead to the break of the tunnel.
So if you do get rain
or you get intense winds or hail,
you definitely wanna make sure
you have a rounded top tunnel.
If you're wondering about this bed,
this was a lasagna flip
that I then planted two different types of eggplant in,
as well as a row of okra down the middle
and a couple extra okras at the end.
The idea is that these are very summer loving crops.
Both okra and eggplant thrive in the heat,
and that's really what they need
to start really producing heavily.
So that's why we're doing this protective cover
on this bed here.
And this one's going to be a little bit different
because I wanna do a more square style hoop
since it's wider.
So what we're working with here
is a roughly four by eight bed in dimensions fully.
But in reality, what I wanna do here
is from the end of that tape to where my finger is
is three feet.
So I want the span of the hoop to be three feet,
and then I also want it to be 16 inches tall,
so right about here where my finger is.
And then we're going to bury
somewhere between six to 10 inches deep.
So let's just go ahead and say eight inches deep,
which will bring us to two feet.
So what we need to do next is cut a wire
that is two feet by three feet by two feet.
So now we're looking at a seven foot long piece of wire.
That's going to be spanning the bed
and creating the structure that holds up the net.
In this case,
we're going to be using frost fabric,
but like I said earlier,
you can throw insect netting,
bird netting or even shade cloth over the structure
that I'm building over here.
So let's go ahead and grab our wire.
What we're going to be using is 12 gauge galvanized wire.
You could buy this online,
or if you go to the big box store,
it's very easy to find.
Usually where they sell ropes, chains, fasteners,
things like that,
you'll see something like this.
12 gauge is just thick enough
that I believe it's sturdy enough
to hold up to anything that would happen in the garden.
So that's what I would go with.
I wouldn't go with a thinner wire.
Now, the other thing you'll need
is something to cut the wire with.
So I'm using the (indistinct).
They're not actually garden pruners,
so don't worry,
I'm not ruining my garden pruners.
They're designed to cut metal.
And then we're also going to be using
a bunch of landscape staples.
You'll see exactly why we're using this,
but these are kind of like the little secret
to keep this whole structure rigid,
alongside with some sort of twine or string
or whatever you really want to use.
In this case, I'm using cotton butcher twine
just because I like that it's cotton
and it will break down
without shredding any plastics or anything like that.
So let's get into the initial hoop construction.
And for that, what we need is the wire.
So I'm going to be straightening this by hand,
just kind of bending it
against the direction it wants to bend.
You can try to perfect the wire
by making it really straight
to look more like nice and neat.
I'm not going to personally bother
because it's going to be covered anyway,
and it shouldn't really affect the function
of the actual structure itself.
We're constructing exactly what we want and need.
It doesn't have to be perfect,
it doesn't need to look perfect,
it doesn't have to be measured perfect.
Just kinda make it roughly the dimensions you want,
and I guarantee you it'll work just fine.
So here we are,
we have a seven foot-ish piece of wire,
maybe a little bit longer.
And so right here is 24,
and that's going to be where I bend it.
So that'll be leg number one.
Once I have that bend in,
I could start working the wire
to make a roughly straight piece of wire.
Okay, so actually pretty good,
and it really doesn't require much force.
You don't need to be strong or anything to do this
because it's very bendable.
Now what I'm going to be doing
is straightening out the tough part.
So let's come on this side.
And about two feet, actually, yeah,
looks like I'm basically just at eight feet here.
I'm gonna go ahead and trim this just for consistency
so that it's closer to the actual dimensions.
All right, so there's the actual structure itself,
a piece of wire bent into a sort of partial square.
And what I'm going to do now
is sink this in roughly eight inches.
I'm not measuring anything anymore.
And then sink it on this side as well,
roughly eight inches.
So there we go.
Strain this out a little bit.
You can do a little bit more bending if you want.
And there's our first two.
It really seems like this won't work,
and that's because on its own, it really won't.
So the next step is going to be
what really literally ties it all together.
So for now what I'm going to do
is cut out the rest of these hoops.
We'll come back,
and I'll show you exactly
how to make the structure actually rigid and functional.
Now that we have the hoops in place,
it's time to make them rigid.
Now, since this is a double wide,
meaning that I'm doing something like three feet across,
I'm going to be doing twice as much support stakes
across the top.
So let's get into that right now.
What you're going to need is your landscape staple,
and this is where your twine or string or whatever
comes into play.
I like using these really deep, long staples.
These are I think 10 inches,
maybe 12 inch staples.
And you could usually find those online.
So what I'm doing is I'm just tying a bunch of knots.
I'm not a knot expert.
So I'm doing like three regular overhand knots,
and that should make it slip proof.
And then what I'm going to do
is actually take the stake
and bury it just about six inches to a foot
out from in front of your bed.
And this ground over here is nice and hard
because I didn't broad fork over here,
so the staple
is actually going to be anchoring very effectively.
So that's buried in the ground.
I'm gonna grab my twine now,
and here's what we're going to be doing.
I'm going underneath and then over the top.
So now I have this little kind of knot here.
And as I'm going,
I'm going to be adjusting the tension of this
and maybe even doing a third pass like this
to create a sort of pseudo knot up here.
Now this is kind of self-tensioning a bit.
And the idea behind this is that you want the hoop
to stay roughly where it was originally,
and this string is going to be counterbalancing it.
So as I go to the next tube,
same exact thing.
I'm gonna go over,
and then we'll do another wrap that way and pull that tight.
So now even just attaching these two,
you now see that they're working together,
they're now much more rigid.
It's a actual structure now
instead of just a collection of hoops sitting out here.
And we're gonna do one wrap on this side,
another wrap on that side,
and that should make the whole thing super rigid.
And I'll show you just how rigid it is
once it's all strung up.
Now the string is in place,
and if you see when I touch one of these hoops,
every single hoop moves together.
They're a lot more sturdy,
they're less likely to flop over from one side to the other.
And now we can move on to actually putting our cloth
and supporting it over the structure.
When it comes to choosing the dimensions
of the fabric itself,
you wanna consider having a little bit of a gap
on either side.
So across the top, we know it's three feet.
And we originally cut these to be two feet,
but then we buried an extra six inches.
Now, that means the total span of the original piece of wire
was seven feet long,
and actually that's going to be the width
of the cloth that we cut.
That's because we already buried six inches on either side.
So that gives us an extra six inches of cloth
to hang out on both sides
and still cover the whole span of the bed.
The other consideration of course is the length,
which is roughly eight feet.
You can either decide to leave it open
on the end of the tunnel,
which will allow a little bit more airflow through
but still trap some heat.
Or you could pull it tight on either end
and fully seal in the plants that you're growing.
In that case,
you're gonna wanna have probably an extra two feet of cloth
on either side
so that you could really bunch it down and pull it straight.
So in this case,
if this is a roughly eight foot span,
I would probably cut it to around 12 feet,
just to give myself extra wiggle room.
In this case, since it is eight feet
and I don't need it to be fully sealed,
I'm gonna probably just cut it to 10 feet
so I have a little bit of an overhang,
but I won't fully seal the tunnel.
So now let's go over to my area where I keep my cloth,
and I'll show you how I cut it,
and talk a little bit about how to choose cloth
and sort of the proportions that they might come in.
All right, so now we're talking about fabrics,
and Cosmo decided that he had to come help.
He's being very pathetic here sitting in front of me.
But I have a tape measure here.
And from that end to this point over here is eight feet.
And what we need to do is cut some fabric
that is eight by 10 feet in dimensions.
The way that this AG-19 frost fabric from Agribon came
was actually in a 10 foot wide by 100 foot long spool.
So now I want a 10 by eight foot section.
So instead of actually cutting the width,
what we're going to be doing here
is cutting eight feet of length
because the width of this is already 10 feet.
I don't know if that was a little bit confusing,
but it's just the way that these dimensions are.
So what I'm going to do here is bunch up my corners.
So there's my starting point right there,
and I'm going to unfurl this
until I get to that eight foot mark.
All right, so right where my hand is over here
is eight feet.
So now I'm going to just make sure
that I'm still true to the dimensions here
since it moved a little bit.
I need you to move, Cosmo.
All right, so I feel like pretty confident
that this is going to be the dimension I need,
roughly eight by 10 feet.
So I'm gonna grab my knife and cut it right here.
All right, let's bring that back over to the structure
and see if I got the dimensions right or wrong.
I just realized I said I needed a seven foot cut
and I just did an eight foot cut.
So this might be a little bit longer than needed,
but that's totally fine.
You definitely want excess rather than not enough
because then you're just not going to be able
to cover your tunnel.
So now the fun part,
figuring out how to support this.
And the other bonus about these strings, by the way,
is that they help keep this cloth even more upright
off from drooping onto the plants.
So it's actually a multi-purpose kind of thing.
So I'm gonna start by just trying to drape this over,
make sure that we're good,
have plenty of excess on this side,
have good overlaps,
and I have just enough excess on this side as well.
Now that we have the fabric ready,
let's go ahead and show you how to support it.
You're gonna want a landscape staple on every corner
of the structure that you're trying to support.
And then we're also going to need some more of that twine.
So now let's actually stake this down
and get it really nice and tight.
Now, there might be a better way out there,
I honestly didn't look,
but this seemed to work really well.
It's kind of what I just figured out
while doing it over on the beds back there.
What you're going to do is make sure first of all
that your fabric is lined up roughly how you want it.
That looks good to me.
And then you're going to take the corner of that fabric,
so here's the corner,
take your landscape staple,
and then what we're going to do here
is literally tie an overhand knot like so
right onto the staple.
This is really I think the key
to making this really nice and rigid.
And one overhand knot like that seems to be plenty tight.
Now what you're going to do is place this,
I like to place this somewhat in front.
So like right here is the hoop support.
I wanna make sure this stake is on the inside of that.
That way, it kind of creates a tight tension
wrapping around the structure itself,
and it's not just flopping out straight out.
So I'm gonna go in right about there,
about two or so inches in
from the actual support stake here,
sync that, take some twine again.
And then, so here's the knot of the fabric.
What we're going to do is take this twine
and actually tie a knot
on the inside of the knot from the fabric.
And you'll see why in a moment here.
Like so, do another one.
And there we are.
So this is the original first stake.
Let's go ahead to the other side and do that one
so we can make this lineup very nicely.
So all we're doing here is tying off the fabric itself.
We're not going to be putting the twine on
because the twine is still attached to the spool there.
But I wanted to make sure
that both sides were at least equal to some level,
and that way it's not going to be all annoying
once we actually string this up.
And now here's the secret.
This piece of string
is going to go on the outside of the fabric like so.
So right here, you'll see it's going on top,
and I'm going to bring this down to the other side.
And now we're going to repeat the procedure over here.
And now I have the full tension of this fabric in my hand.
So wherever I put this is going to dictate that tension.
But luckily, since this is a staple,
we can't always move this.
So right here it feels nice and tight.
When I tug on this,
I feel tension on the cloth.
So I'm gonna sink it right there.
We have this weird rock here
which will make this a little bit different
than most people's.
So now this is extremely tight.
You can see when I pull this,
it all becomes tensioned.
Now we're gonna take that string,
and watch this.
That string is going to be keeping this fabric
from flopping over and flying all over the place.
So we want this to be very tight on the string itself.
So let's go ahead and cut this,
and we're going to tie it
onto the inside of the staple again,
and try to cinch this knot down as tight as you can.
You don't really want a lot of flexibility in this line.
Go underneath.
And then I'm gonna do another two overhand knots.
And then I'm gonna push the staple in as much as it allows.
And now check this out,
this string, tight as a drum.
That's gonna keep this from flopping all over the place.
So now let's go do the other corners.
Here's the staple
where we tied off the other corner of the cloth.
I'm gonna do the same thing that I showed you earlier.
Take my twine,
tie a couple overhand knots in like so,
maybe one more.
And then plant that staple down.
Grab your line.
And now once we get to the other side,
what we're going to do here
is try to pull the extra tension left on this cloth here
because this last corner is going to dictate
how sort of snugged up this whole structure is.
So what I'm doing is I'm pulling a little bit on this side,
pulling a little on the other side
until it looks like it's squared up on the top here.
That's going to be where I want that last knot.
So I'm gonna put my staple around that point.
This will be the longest, biggest knot.
And now we're gonna move that staple
back onto the inside of the leg again.
And just as a reminder,
this line here is keeping the fabric in place
and stopping the wind from blowing it over.
It really helps keep the whole structure nice and tight
and keeps the fabric from flopping all over the place.
So now check this out.
Everything's moving together
because we're all tied up together.
And this is now very tight.
I left a little bit of gap here
so that air can still come through,
but overall this is going to increase the temperature
in here quite dramatically.
I'll try to include a thermometer in here
and do a comparison with the outside.
So here I have one that's in the outside,
same area, same amount of sunlight,
and it's getting a temp of 77.9 Fahrenheit.
So I come in here,
I have another one of these,
and this one is reading 90 degrees.
So we're looking at a temperature delta
of basically 12 degrees,
and that's pretty substantial.
It's going to make a huge difference
on how fast these things grow.
It's exactly why I do it.
If these temps really get much more above 90,
like say 95,
and it's probably going to happen since it's gray right now,
I will probably want to add more ventilation.
So what I'm going to do
is open up the ends of the tunnel
instead of leaving them closed
like I showed you in the build from this video.
Actually haven't tried this before,
but I'm assuming it's going to work in the same way.
So what we're going to do here
is I already have a leftover hoop.
I'm going to just bend out another one
from this master spool.
And what we're going to do here
is I'm going to just go until the bottom of the bag.
I'm not gonna measure anything.
Then I'm going to wrap it on top of the other hoop like so.
And then visualize where the bottom of the bag is.
Cut that.
Go in.
All right, so now I have this structure here,
which should keep the cloth
from sinking down on top of the plant.
And by the way,
this is a peanut plant,
and peanuts are another plant
that are very notorious for needing a lot of heat.
Here in San Diego,
we don't really have it,
and I've actually never really successfully,
I mean, I've grown peanuts,
but I've never got a lot of them.
So I'm hoping
that this will actually transform my peanut game.
So what I'm gonna do here
is I just have a small piece of leftover cloth
that I'm hoping looks like it's going to be close,
from a previous project.
Try to save this stuff as much as you can
since it's plastic.
I wish there was a better alternative,
but I honestly can't think of one.
So I'm gonna actually, you know what?
I'm gonna just tuck this into the bag itself.
Go ahead and bury it into the soil a little bit like so,
just around the perimeter.
And this is another thing where I probably won't,
I'm not gonna leave this on here forever,
but I do wanna leave this on here
until we actually get some sunlight again.
Looks like I buried a little too deep on that side.
Okay.
Just like so.
And since this is actually buried into the soil,
the other one is kind of floating on the soil.
This one will actually probably trap even more heat
more effectively than the other setup we did.
So that's another tip.
If you do wanna trap all the heat entirely
and you really need that extra heat,
you can bury the cloth into the soil
and basically cut off any airflow.
So here we are.
Funny little structure (laughs).
All right, so this isn't gonna win any beauty contests,
that's for sure,
but this is going to provide a very effective boost
to these temperatures,
and hopefully I'll get a really nice amount of peanuts.
Now, the other thing of course that we can do here
is just take a piece of twine,
come out of the base here and then push the string down
so it's near soil level.
All right, there we have it.
A nice little bonus temperature booster from my peanuts.
So it seems like if I put another hoop,
it would be a little bit more round
because I basically made a square here,
but I'm not really worried about it.
I'm just trying to trap as much heat as I can
so I could get those peanuts.
And that's it, guys.
You could do whatever fabric you want, like I mentioned.
Don't forget, you could use shade cloth,
insect netting, bird netting,
whatever it is you need.
These little 12 gauge wires are really cheap.
This is very easy to do
if you're not perfectly worried
about exact rows and aesthetics.
Very easy to do at home.
Anyone could do it.
Requires no strength or anything special.
So hopefully this was helpful,
and I'll see you guys around.
We'll see if we get any peanuts this year.