I decided that this year I finally needed to build a hoop house.  I live in New England and so I have a short growing season and need to extend it a little bit.  I don’t want to go too crazy this year, but if I could get my cool season crops started a little early, that would be perfect.  So here is how I built mine over one of my garden rows.

I bought 2′ pieces of 3/8″ rebar, enough for a pair about every five feet.  I put each pair in the ground across from each other at least one foot deep.  I went further if I could, but I hit enough rocks so that most of them are only a foot deep.  Next, I used 9′ pieces of PVC piping to make the hoops.  I simply slid each end over the piece of rebar that was sticking out of the ground.  Then I draped the 10′ wide row cover over the hoops with enough fabric on each end to cover the openings.  I used Agribon fabric for my row cover.  This is lightweight fabric that is supposed to let sun and rain through to the plants, but protect from frost.  We will see if that is true.  To hold the fabric in place, I put bricks or rocks on the 6″ of extra fabric I had on each side of the hoop.  And that is all I did, a very easy project.  Not too expensive either.  The row cover was about $50 for 100′, the piping was almost $2 for a 10′ section and 2′ rebar stakes were about $1.50.