We built a High Tunnel Greenhouse! Growing Food All YEAR

In just a few weeks, this space underwent a massive transformation. We went from an overgrown pasture area to a fully built high tunnel and even got the garden beds prepped and ready for planting so that we can have fresh vegetables all throughout the winter. If there is one thing that I could pinpoint that accelerated our ability to grow a year's supply of food, it would be growing in tunnels. And because of this, we decided to add another tunnel to our homestead garden. The tunnel that we built is the Haven High Tunnel and it comes from Farmer's Friend. A big thank you to Farmer's Friend for sponsoring this video. In the middle of August is when we started to prep this area. So prior to anything being here, I had planted some cover crops in here but it was a lot of weeds mixed in with the cover crops. So I just flail mowed that entire area and then we laid down some edging to kind of delineate where the garden was going to be. And then the tunnel arrived. We got a 16 feet wide by 96 foot long tunnel and the reason we chose that sizing is because of the length of our garden. So I just wanted it to span from one end down to the other end. Cam just did the corner post and put it in. Our ground is so hard here and there's a lot of rocks. It's probably going to be best to rent a, what's it called? A jackhammer slash teepos pounder. Pretty sure you don't want to do all that by hand. It's just going to make it a lot faster to rent that and it's going to save his body. Which needs saved. As you get older, you got to take good care of your body. That's what it's about. It's going to be 96 feet so we're measuring from the corner post all the way down to the other end. Wow, we both see exactly. Yeah, this should be 16. 15 foot, 11 and a half. You were right. I don't have a tape measure. It's down there. Okay. Yeah, I said like six to seven inches. When I first started gardening, I had a dream of having a greenhouse and the greenhouse I had in my head was one of those really pretty greenhouses that looks a little bit like a house and is made out of wood for the framing and has like a hard plastic or glass on the top and the sides. A lot of these greenhouses also have a floor so they are more of just like a potting shed and that's pretty much all that they can be used for. This type of greenhouse is marketed to hobby growers and the price tag is incredibly high. Most of these greenhouses are anywhere from $40 to $70 a square foot. By the time I was ready to invest in a greenhouse so that we could extend our growing season, that is the time when I found out about Farmer's Friend Tunnels and I am so glad I did. The tunnels are more versatile because you can use it as a seed starting area or you can grow plants in the ground and use it for season extension. Everything about this tunnel is super high quality so you're getting way more bang for your buck when you get a tunnel. It's five to ten times more affordable than a hobby type greenhouse when considering price per square foot as a deciding factor. So the other important aspect of this of course is sizing. So it comes in all different lengths. It's 16 feet wide, that's the set width, but the lengths vary from 24 feet at the smallest and then it goes up in 12 foot increments all the way up to 120 feet. So you could choose whatever size you needed to fit in the space that you have. The weather's been so nice this week we couldn't wait to get out here and install the end bows and the inner bows, basically the ribs of the high tunnel, right? Yeah. Good. Yeah we're gonna have the whole family out here today to help. Yeah they are so excited. For a long time I did not understand how valuable it is to grow in a protected space like a high tunnel. I knew it was great for season extension but that's about it. So aside from extending the season, a high tunnel can also accelerate plant growth so you can harvest in less time. Another benefit is in a wet and humid climate. This is what I have. I am able to protect my plants from excessive rainfall. This can cause drainage problems which I've definitely experienced before and having all of that rainfall can also cause a lot of disease problems. So it's really great to be able to have that covered space so I don't get all of the rain. Five inches and just tighten up so it doesn't slip is fine. They're all... Okay I don't want to mess it up. Where'd that little wrench thing go? In the pocket. There it is. A high tunnel can also protect from other extreme weather events like high winds that can damage plants. In the heat of summer I can add a shade cloth to cool everything in the tunnel down when it's too hot or sunny. This is especially valuable for leafy greens that will bolt or get bitter. Another thing is it can also act as a seed starting area and this is one of my favorite aspects. Starting seeds outside in a tunnel is just so so so much easier than starting them indoors. It almost completely eliminates the need to harden off the seedlings and they are so much more strong and healthy. Here we are. Okay there's that. So another thing that I have not tried yet but my sister Amy does is she puts all her chickens in her high tunnel in the winter. It keeps them warm, it fertilizes the area, and they also lay more eggs. So the only disadvantage I've ever experienced with growing in a tunnel is rodents love the covered space because they are not as visible to predators. Luckily it's pretty easy to remedy this. Honestly if I could grow my entire garden under the protection of tunnels I would because weather and nature are so unpredictable and the conditions are rarely if ever perfect for growing just naturally. So having a tunnel allows me to gain back a little bit of that control of the environment around my plants making it so I can grow more quality food in less time and harvest through winter. I was super excited to get started on prepping the garden beds for inside of the tunnel and to do that we really needed some more compost so Cam borrowed a dump trailer from a friend to go and pick up this compost. This is the first time that we have gotten compost from this place. It's a different place than I normally go to so we're gonna try it out and see how it goes but overall it looks pretty good. Here we go. So it's like just so it can still move but that it's pretty much on okay now put those nuts on. He's doing it. And then we'll come by with a wrench later and really like tighten those down but I kind of want them all just a little bit loose right like finger tight right now. Why'd you take them off? We got to work together as a team or we're never going to make it to the Olympics of high tunnels okay. This is the good life right here. So there's three c channels with this and we Cam just put it like bam one two three because he didn't look at the directions but I just double checked because it didn't really make sense in my head and so we took off that one and then we're putting it down here where it goes. We've got all the sidewall double c channel this stuff put up. I did I did say I wanted to get the plastic in the corners but before that the instructions said it's now is a good time to put up or to at least brace for the dutch door end walls and so that's what I'm going to do right now. For the high tunnel Farmer's Friend has several options for the end walls. A single or double zipper end wall or the other option is a dutch door and we chose the dutch door end walls. The dutch doors are going to be like level and straight up and down instead of tilted because when the door swings open it'll always stay open. That make sense? I'm plumbing it so that it won't do that so it's straight up and down so that's what this is. It's two inches out. I need to move this that way when that thing stops swinging it's right up on the line. We just went there last night. I think that's good. While Cam is doing the front door I'm working on the inside of the tunnel. We took off there was a silage tarp on here we took it off so we could work on this and now everything is kind of grown back up again so I need to go through with the plow mower and kind of mow it all down. I'm also taking out there are a couple patches of Bermuda grass if you're familiar with that you know how invasive it is so I'm trying to get that out right now. Then we are going to broad fork the whole area that we're planting and the other thing that I'm doing differently in here is I am not going to plow beforehand like I normally do I'm just going to do like completely no till uh aside from the broad fork. I know some people like count that as tilling yeah we're not that extreme. No we're not so we're Cam's gonna do some of the broad forking for me to kind of break up the soil I think if we hit big rocks I want you to pull those out. After that the plan is to lay down some thick paper that I got it's especially for gardening it's actually organic paper which I've never heard of before but the reason for getting specifically organic paper is I had some feedback once when we were using paper before that sometimes they use a lot of chemicals and glues in the paper like the PFAS stuff um not that they use that in cardboard just other stuff okay but so we're trying to avoid that along the edges I'm going to put the regular not natural ground cover the sort of plasticky stuff but where I'm actually planting we're just going to put the paper down I'm going to put compost on the top we're going to put mulch on the top in the walking pads and form everything that way after everything's brought forward yeah okay now pull up the same crease there you go a little tick yep okay we just want it kind of small 11 12 13 14 15. Nice let's see if it works guys yay we're on to the fun part which for me is setting up the garden beds I'm super excited to plant in here we are going to get this covered in a little bit but I told cam I really want to get things planted before it gets too late in the year because I want to utilize this tunnel right away well have mom like stand on it or something okay and then just set it got the string lines going all the way down the end and right here we just lined up this little frame here with the string lines and we're going to fill this with compost no turning back now okay you I'm not really super confident that that paper is going to keep all of the weeds out however we did have the silage harps in that area before we had put the paper down so the weeds that were coming up most of those were just annual weeds and the perennials like the Bermuda grass I did get the majority of that out there may be some left over and I saw a couple little weeds here and there that looked like perennials so I may need to dig those out later on if they pop up through that paper but hopefully us going into fall that's going to work towards our advantage because all of those annuals would be dying off anyway the plastic quarter panel adds some extra protection especially when it's cold outside you want to keep drafts out it will be really nice to have that extra little layer of protection there it's really funny I feel like anytime we are moving plastic around the garden using silage tarps or in this case we were putting the plastic on top of the tunnel it was a windy day and maybe it's just because I notice it when we're moving stuff around but it was a little bit of a challenge to get it on but we did it he loves the tunnel he loves the backside roll-up bar let's see if it works so this area where I'm laying down ground cover is going to be my seed starting area I'm super excited about this because I've never had such a large area to start seeds but we have outgrown our current one the seed starting area is getting close to being done it's a little bit lumpy and bumpy right now that is not a big deal because after the weeds die off it'll all flatten down and then I'll just readjust all of that ground cover I took off those silage tarps prematurely in here a lot of the weeds grew back so fast here is the finished high tunnel I am super duper excited about this it's gonna be such a game changer for the garden I can't wait to grow stuff in here using a kit made it fast and easy to put up so we can get growing right away so I'm back out here to finish what I started hi that didn't really work good thing the camera didn't fall oh my goodness Becky's got to do an intro before she films so she's gonna come up here with me I'm gonna step out of the frame and she's gonna talk say like 15 words 20 and then intro will be done and then she'll get back to broad forking oh nice got a little floater plane that's cool land here we have a pond we need rescued