Hi, I'm Heidi Rader here in the Alaska Garden.
I'm with UAF Cooperative Extension Service and Tanana Chiefs Conference.
I'm here in Homer, Alaska checking out all the cool things farmers are doing here
to extend the season like high tunnels, hoop houses, low tunnels and also the
other cool tools they're using as small-scale farmers.
Hi, I'm with Carey Restino here at Homer Hilltop Farm and we're gonna talk about season
extension and the various high tunnels and hoop houses she has here on the farm
and kind of how she got into farming.
Glad you're here!
So, Carey, how did how did high tunnels help you farm here in Homer and kind of provide a season extension for you.
Well, early on there's a lot of wind here in this particular
plot and early on I saw some other people doing some pretty neat things
that weren't very expensive so I started out with just regular PVC hoop houses
like this one we're standing in right now and then slowly through the NRCS
grant program I was able to put up some bigger high tunnels and they've made a
tremendous difference on our entire operation and now we've evolved into
commercial sales which you know was not our original intent but the extension
allows for us to grow things that are much faster and more efficient rate.
Because you're in a little bit colder area of Homer up here on Diamond Ridge
sounds like you have a longer winter.
We do. We have a longer winter and also it
just doesn't heat up as much up here. So we're at about 1,200 feet here and it's
about a month more of snow on the ground. So the high tunnels are wonderful
especially in the shoulder season and and there's some things they're good for
and some things that aren't so great.
So, as far as crops?
Yeah, it's crops and also just different times of year when things can grow well.
So tell us a little bit about this high tunnel? It's pretty basic,
it sounds like it didn't cost very much money to build.
Yeah so these are just PVC regular materials you can find in any grocery store and early on I went out to a friend's house where
they had something like this put up and thought "Well I can do this" and so I went
out and it's anchored into the ground with rebar that you put the tubes the
PVC over and then you just pull six mil plastic over the top of that just
regular construction stuff and it works great and in fact in some situations it
works better than the larger tunnels where all the heat goes up into the air
the shorter - it's more consistent temperature-wise.
And then you've just got purlins screwed on.
Yeah, real basic. Real basic. The first one that I put up we just had sandbags anchoring all the plastic down we didn't even screw it in
with furring strips. Now we do a little bit more, but it's not great in that
it's not very long-lasting.
It's not as quite as good in the wind, it sounds like.
Right. And you know, things just fall apart so as you evolve as a farmer and
you realize how much time you waste trying to hold together things that
aren't great, you start investing in things that work better.
Yeah well, good. Let's put on the plastic.
All right. Lets give it a go.
A little bit more there.
And then you just anchor it with the sandbags and logs and things?
We put firring strips on after it gets nice and tight we'll screw that all in.
But it you have to get it pretty tight to keep the rain from pooling.
And you take this off each winter?
Oh yeah, for sure. In fact you don't want it even to get an inch of snow. It's yeah, we've had tunnels, you see the October snow and you
you definitely have to get out there right away and take that down.
Well, that was easy enough to put the plastic on. Let's go check out the caterpillar tunnel.
Great! Okay.
So this is a caterpillar tunnelyou have it looks a little beefier than the PVC that you used to make your other hoop house.
Yup. So this is definitely an upgrade. We got these from Farmers
Friend last year. There are three pieces of metal so they come on a regular
pallet and the way they're strung together is with a strap that holds the
tension. This is still being put back together after the winter but then the
plastic skins over the side and you can push the plastic up and ventilate from
the bottom up. So it's a fairly inexpensive way of getting yourself into
a plastic-covered enclosure.
And you can make them any length or?
Yeah, they have up to 100 feet. I think it's probably limited by the size of the length of the plastic.
But they are pretty versatile and a lot of farmers use them to start their
crops off and then they remove them so they're just anchored by a piece of
rebar in the ground so you can pull those up without disturbing your crops
underneath and then move them to another plot start something else.
And so this provides a little bit of stability to the structure?
It does and if you're not trying to keep it up through the winter it's probably reasonable.
Some people have some issues with wind and the latest
models actually have a metal pipe that goes along the top and have more stability.
And then you also anchor the plastic to this?
That's right. And that's one of the issues I've had with it. If you've got the plastic coming out like a
big Tootsie Roll your access is supposed to be in through the side but as you can
see we put mesh up along the side to keep rodents, cats, dogs, rabbits out of
there and so that's not really a good access for us. So we're gonna modify this a little bit.
And did you say you had problems with water pooling on the sides too?
Right. So the way it works is there are these little metal hooks that
hold the plastic up and if you have a big rainstorm the water pulls up and the
water's really heavy. So sometimes we've come out and there's a lot of weight on that structure.
And so how do you hold the plastic up to ventilate?
I'll show you. So this little grommet here holds everything up and it folds
out of the way so you can let your plastic go where you pull it up
here and the plastic all pulls up from the bottom and sits right there.
Oh nice. Looks like a really great high tunnel design.
Yeah it's affordable and efficient and pretty easy to get into.
Well let's go check out your larger high tunnel.
So this is your large high tunnel here?
That's correct. This is a 2,100 square foot high tunnel and it's been up for seven years.
It was the first one that we put up after we graduated from our PVC hoop houses and
it's a pretty beefy structure. A lot of the high tunnels that go up are a lot
have a lot smaller pipes and framework.
It looks really solid.
This is a good one.
And it's a gothic style -
Gothic style arch so it does shed the snow somewhat but not all the time and in fact on heavy snow years we have to spend quite a lot of time
clearing the sides and making sure the snow can shed.
Because you leave the plastic on all winter?
We do now. The first few years there was no way I could
keep the snow off it, so I just took the plastic off each year and this
particular kind of plastic is ten mil and it has reinforcements in it which is
really good for if you're planning to take your high tunnel cover off.
And that probably extends your season even more because then there's no snow in here in the spring.
Right. Exactly. And that's the reason we started leaving it on is it
just makes a huge difference if you don't have to deal with four feet of
snow that you need melt.
So how much does it extend your season?
Well, I think that probably at least a month and a half on each side. Things still grow slowly in
the very beginning. You can't change the fact that the soil temperature is still
really cold in the spring. There's plenty of frost in it, so it takes a while for
the soil to warm up enough and then you start to see some real growth.
And it sounds like it doesn't hold much heat during the night either.
No, really actually people have studied that and in fact because of the humidity
in here, it's actually sometimes colder in the tunnels than it is outside.
But some things really fare very well. This crop of arugula here actually got
over-wintered - was a little bit of a surprise but there are some arugulas that have
super long tap roots so that started coming back and it's fantastic. I mean
you can tell it's way ahead of this other stuff. But the thing about that arugula
is when we planted it originally it was really pretty hot. It was a second
planting and maybe in mid-july and I think it was too hot for it. So there's a
lot of crops sometimes that need to be outside the middle of the summer, that this
is not the best growing conditions.
Right. You've got mostly cool season crops in here now in May.
But then this particular bed of lettuces does better
than some of these cooler-season crops like the Asian greens. This bed of a
particular variety of mixed lettuces went all the way through the summer and was pretty happy.
Oh wow, nice. So, in the summer your problem is that it can get too hot in here.
So how do you deal with that?
Well, we have drop-down sides which I like better than roll-up sides because they keep the col air off of
the greens themselves especially in the shoulder season. But when we drop those
down, it goes down about to halfway down the side walls on both sides and we get
cross ventilation and most of the time it's fifty-five-sixty degrees outside, so
as long as there's a little breeze to get things going, that usually cools things down.
Did you have to design those drop down sides?
That's a Farm Tech implement and this is a Farm Tech tunnel so it came with this drop-down
side option. But then when I got other tunnels that didn't, I bought the same hardware for it.
And then so as far as access to the tunnel
this is a little easier than say getting in your caterpillar tunnel.
Yup but you do lose a bit of heat up in the top there because they're higher and that makes
more of a difference in the shoulder season.
Okay. And then for tilling in here
you you just till with a rototiller and you bring it through that larger door?
No, you can actually fit my tiller through there but I don't. I'm mostly no-till.
So I use a broad fork and a Tilther and a bunch of other tools.
Great. Anything else that you'd like to talk about with this high tunnel?
Well, the one issue always with high tunnels is that
you don't get any rain, so you'll obviously have to invest quite a bit in
your water system and keeping that up and running is always a constant
expense and struggle. And also you know you have to do a lot with weed
mitigation and there's been a large learning curve figuring all that out over the time.
But there's ways to do it that it works really well.
And then also with keeping the plastic on you don't have the advantages of the rain or snow to flush out anything in the soil.
Exactly. I think there, you know, anytime
you deviate from what nature does you create some problems and we have issues
with some of our crops especially tomatoes with mold
especially in August when it starts raining all the time. So you have to
constantly be ahead of that and then figuring out different varieties of
plants that work really well in these kinds of conditions. Salinova lettuces
for example. Their head lettuces are great but some other iceberg lettuce is
in this kind of environment kind of mold in the in the center or head lettuces
rather not iceberg. But, so, different varieties work differently in this kind
of humid environment.
Well, it's really great to hear about all these different types of
season extension technologies you're using and kind of the advantages and
disadvantages of each of them.
Well, it's definitely all been a game changer for
us and like we were saying and the other tunnel, you know preventing wind and
pests - we've even have issues sometimes with birds eating our lettuces.
I guess they're that good. That's so inside the tunnel you have a
controlled environment. It really makes a difference.
Well, great.