Let’s talk about hoop houses. First of all, what are they? A greenhouse? A high tunnel? Something else?

I’m an ambitious gardening amateur. For me, a hoop house is a structure using arched rails (or “hoops”) and plastic sheeting to form a small tunnel-like greenhouse. I have two: one that’s 20 feet long by 14 feet wide, and one that’s 40 feet long and 12 feet wide.

Technically, they’re greenhouses. I wouldn’t call mine high tunnels, though; that term seems reserved for the much bigger greenhouses used on farms for sheltering small livestock or cultivating tender crops. Those can reach 96 feet!

Back in 2019, some friends in the area acquired a high tunnel through the NCRS High Tunnel Initiative, a USDA program. Their site was approved after a visit, and once they’d purchased and assembled the high tunnel to NCRS specifications, they were reimbursed for 100% of costs. 

I wanted in.

My first hoop house

But COVID happened. Supply chains went crazy and costs skyrocketed. I watched my potential reimbursement drop from 100% to unfeasibly low figures, even as I shopped around for the most affordable components. Although my friends had been fully funded, I’d heard of other people only able to be reimbursed 75%. Others even less.

In the end, I decided to forgo it. I refocused: A friend of mine was moving houses but not taking his 20-by-14-foot hoop house. It was a little beat up and missing some components, and there was no NCRS funding for something like this, but for $300, that baby was all mine.

A simple hoop house is these components: 1. Top rail for the arches. 2. Ground posts. 3. Ledger board. 4. Plastic sheeting. 5. Spring wire system. 

Top rail is the stuff that tops a chain link fence at a school. Bent into hoops, these form the skeleton of the hoop house. Ground posts drive into the ground and receive the hoops. Ledger board (or some kind of board), affixes to the top rail / hoops at about waist height. Plastic then drapes over the whole thing, typically “6 mil greenhouse film.” This transmits up to 90% of sunlight and blocks UV rays, but the longer waves of heat energy can’t pass back through easily, so heat build-up occurs. Spring wire (sometimes called wiggle wire) and wire-lock channels fastened to the ledger board then pin the plastic taut in place.

When I first reconstructed my friend’s small hoop house on my property, I had the bent hoops, the plastic (slightly used) and the ground posts. I had the wiggle wire and channel but no way to roll up the sidewalls except by hand. I would use spring clips to pin up the plastic. This was a regular nightmare, as every time it rained, the water would pool in the rolled-up part. I tried angling the rolled sidewalls so that the rain would drain into buckets, but it rarely worked for long. Strong winds hunted the gaps in the plastic and flustered the loose sidewalls. And without weed mats around the perimeter, the grass grew in. 

Yet despite all of this, having built half a dozen raised beds in there and adding my own soil compost mix, I had great success right away. Tomatoes and cucumbers, even sweet potatoes, flourished in that small space. 

Season extension

At first, I didn’t really know what kind of extra growing time I was going to get. Greenhouse plastic traps the infrared radiation until the sun is gone, and the inside soon matches temperatures with the outside. Still, that first year, my veggies lasted a week or two past the first light frost thanks to the wind protection. But once the temps stayed low, that was it. 

I had gained a controlled space. I could add heat by day, control water, and extend the season marginally, thanks to the wind protection. There also seemed to be fewer insect pests. 

Eventually, I purchased curtain kits to properly roll up the sides. Electrical conduit connected end to end, a crank, snap clamps, eye bolts and tie down ropes. I added a kick board along the base of the sidewalls. The zig-zagging tie down ropes kept the sidewalls from billowing in the wind. (Trust me, I jumped for joy once I’d tamed my wild sidewalls). The control was even greater. 

And then there was row-covering.

That first winter, the hard frost ended my season. But I’d learned a cold-weather technique and in March of 2025, I was eating fresh leafy greens and pulling carrots I’d planted the previous November. I’ll share much more about winter growing in an upcoming article!

Bigger and even better?

Even so, I longed for a bigger hoop house. That high tunnel had slipped through my grasp. I had the property and the ambition to do something bigger than 20 feet by 14 feet. 

Another friend (it’s all about friends) had been hanging onto some ground posts, spring wire, conduit and cranks for years. He just hadn’t gotten around to building the 40-foot hoop house. Together, we would.

We bought the plastic and the top rail with a hoop bender for bending it into shape. (It’s easier than you might think!) We dug holes for the ground posts, put them in place, added the hoops and ledger board, and the wire channel. We threw the massive sheet of plastic over the top, pinned it with the wiggle wire, and voila. 

I made three long beds inside. Two were a standard 30 feet long, bordered with firewood and filled with compost. A third was built deeper down the middle using lumber with peat added for things like carrots, beets, and leeks that like to grow deep. For the first time, I tried vertically growing my tomatoes and did so along one side. I grew squash, but they grew so abundantly and rambled everywhere, I probably won’t again!

Lessons

Once you have a hoop house, the old plant-everything-in-June-and-harvest-in-September is over. Every vegetable has a time it does best in the year, and in a hoop house this difference is intensified. Leafy greens do best in the shoulder seasons when it’s cold; with a hoop house you can theoretically grow them all winter. Tomato starts can go in as early as late April. And I’ll cover all that too, in the upcoming piece on hoop house growing and winter harvests.

For now, if you want to add some control to your growing efforts and are thinking about a hoop house, you’ve got options. You can go big and try for NCRS funding (though I believe they have changed things so that there needs to be an existing farm now). You can get something smaller, like 20-by-14 that I started with. And a 40-foot hoop house is still a very manageable size, yet significant enough to get some real production. 

My advice is, don’t wait to neaten up your sidewalls—get a curtain kit right away. The sides regulate the heat and protect from the wind. I added a front door to each of my hoop houses and the back “wall” has a vent near the top; a square cut in the plastic I can roll up when things get extra spicy. Even heat-loving vegetables have a limit! 

Hoop houses are a game changer, and I’ll never go back.

Happy growing!