Adding The Hooped Beds
Good evening! It's been over a week since my last update. Weather and work have been getting in the way, but this weekend, I thought it would be nice to crack on with prepping the new section of the plot and get it sorted for the winter.
Hoop Hoop!
Putting in hooped beds is really common on allotments. People have devised a whole manner of different ways of creating them to help protect their crops. My thoughts are that if I can build a hooped covering for nearly every bed, it doesn't matter if I actually use the net covering on any particular bed in any given year but it does mean that I do have the choice. Sometimes I net crops just while they are in the early stages of growing until they get their feet firmly in the ground. Other times I may keep the crops under netting for the whole season, especially the brassicas. And of course, for some crops like beetroot and parsnips I rarely net them at all. So, let's take a look at how I build my hoops.
Assembling the materials.
The shopping list for the hoops was as follows:
- 50 meters of 25mm MDPE water piping. (Purchased from Screwfix)
- 50mm M5 nuts, bolts and washers. (Screwfix again)
- 3 meter wide scaffold netting. (Purchased from Amazon, but left over from building previous hooped beds.)
- Agralan Enviromesh netting. (Purchased from Amazon a couple of years ago, but never used so far.)
Already on the plot was some left over wooden edging from the work I did last weekend. Rather than leave it as 100mm wide, I brought it home and cut it in half length ways to give a series of 50mm wide battens. It actually worked out several pounds cheaper per length to create battens myself using this method rather than buying the lengths pre-cut. Finally, I had a bag of old aluminium and fibreglass tent poles. I've had loads of tents over the years. The tents themselves may give up, but I never throw away the poles.
Setting the feet for the hoops.
When setting the hoops, on a bed of 2.4 meters in length, I use 3 hoops. One at each end and one in the middle. I push in 6 tent pole sections where I want to position the feet of the hoops. I hammer them into the ground until around 20cm of the pole remains sticking above ground.
Creating the hoops.
Remember that water piping from the shopping list? The next step is to cut it to size. I have found the best size for a stand alone hooped bed where the bed is between 1.1m and 1.2m wide is cutting a length of 2.4m water pipe. This is tall enough for most crops, and sturdy enough to stand up to some quite strong winds.
Pushing in the hoop and adding a ridge batten.
To form the main hoop tunnel, it's now just a case of pushing each length of water pipe over each of the tent pole sections. The hoops should stand up quite straight and should be quite rigid. I have seen people creating hooped beds but have big sags of netting hanging down between each hoop. To overcome this, I have also seen people using bamboo canes as a ridge pole, but I prefer to use a wooden batten. It may cost more that a bamboo cane, but they are significantly stronger.
Once the hoops are pushed onto the tent pole sections, a length of batten is cut to length and is run along on top of the hoops.
Once I'm happy that the batten is in the right place (just eyeballing it will do), I drill a hole through the batten and water pipe and use a nut, bolt and washer on each hoop to hold it all in place.
Adding the netting.
The final part of the process is just adding the netting. For this part of the project, I used some left over scaffold netting. It's 3 meters wide so comfortably fits over the top of the hoop and has enough on the floor alongside each bed to be able to put a series of bricks to hold it down.
Stowing away.
When the net is not in use, I roll it up and fold in the ends before using some string to tie it onto the ridge batten.
When adding the hooped tunnels to the new beds, I ran out of the scaffold netting, but I did have 2 packets of Agralan Enviromesh netting. This is possibly a better netting than the scaffold netting. It's much finer and this particular brand is pretty robust. Above you can see the green scaffold netting on one bed, and the Enviromesh on the other. As and when the scaffold netting eventually degrades to the point when it needs replacing, I will probably replace it with the Enviromesh instead.
There you have it. This is the basic design I have used for all my beds except for 2. I have plans for those further down the line. The only change to the design is to introduce a 4th hoop for any beds getting on 3m in length.
Crop Update...
The garlic planted around 2 weeks ago has poked above the soil surface and coming on well. Perhaps a little too well? I am now thinking that I planted it a bit too early. Hopefully the temperatures will drop soon and slow it down for the winter.
The first of the parsnips have been consumed with more harvested today while in the bath, the carrot harvest keeps on giving. No further heads developing on the cauliflower as yet but the polytunnel bed continues to provide cut and come again salad leaves. The single savoy cabbage is about right for picking but I will need to do that when we have a use for it.
The broccoli has rooted in well. It doesn't seem to be growing much, but it's one of those crops where you need to be in it for the long haul!
