This is bad.

Only 3 inches of ice and snow did this to my hoop-house.

I think I’ve discovered a design flaw in my 50 dollar greenhouse.

Fortunately After removing the snow from my collapse greenhouse it's almost as good as new. But, I think I can prevent this from happening again.

This isn’t a great thing to find on a winters morning, but on the other hand a minor fail like this is just the thing to help improve a design. Fortunately I got the snow off of it before any real damage was done – this time.  If I didn’t live in the (usually) sunny south it wouldn’t have taken me over a year to discover this design flaw.  So – to anyone who’s been inspired by this blog to build a greenhouse…  Sorry about that.

Here’s the thing – as long as rain or snow runs off and doesn’t accumulate which it usually doesn’t – all is well.  It’s even OK for a little bit of snow to accumulate on top, because it just falls right off of the steep sides, and no harm is done.  But once the peak starts to sag then it doesn’t run off like it needs to, and it can build up more weight making it sag even more, which allows more to collect, more weight, more sag… Until you get an ugly surprise.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to run a 2×6 ridge pole right down the middle at the peak of the greenhouse so that the snow (or rain) should slide off before it builds up enough weight to do this again.  I hope.

I will also have to beef up the end frames a little bit to accomodate the extra weight of the 2×6 and of any snow that does accumulate on top.  If I were starting over I would probably either:

1. Use more ribs and put them closer together
2. Use larger pipe for the ribs – probably 1 1/2″ PVC conduit.
3. Both.

BTW, there are many hoop houses in my area and in areas that get lots more snow that work fine and don’t collapse when it snows or when the wind blows – including a HUGE commercial operation about 10 miles away that grows hydroponic lettuce year round.  My design just needs a little refinement.

For example:

Ontario Canada

If you never fail it’s probably because you never do anything.

As soon as I can I’ll post pictures of the improvements.

Ain’t gardening fun!?

While perusing some of the comments that we’ve been blessed with lately I checked into some of the blogs and other web sites that our readers have…

Chris at  – Urban Horticulture has  some great gardening how to articles, and a beautiful site with lots of photos and video content.  His article on Brown Turkey fig trees caught my eye.   I’m thinking of trying some container fruit trees now that I have a greenhouse which I can use to protect them from our notorious late spring frosts.

Dave at  The Home Garden is another Tennessee gardener who blogs on his pastime.  Lately he’s done some good posts on propagation – free plants, you gotta love that.

Cheryl blogs with plenty of photos on her gardening experiences at Cheryl’s Garden Goodies . Her friendly writing style and replies to comments are something that I really enjoy as a visitor.

Andrew at  – Garden Hacker – reports on his garden experiments and links out to other interesting/experimental garden sites.

Bill comments on sustainability and environmental issues at his Recycle blog – just another voice crying out in the wilderness, but maybe if enough of us get on our soapbox our leaders will realize our concern isn’t just a fad.

Dave’s Workout has great articles on Health, fitness, and nutrition as well as healthy / vegetarian cooking. Don’t be intimidated by the sign up form on the home page you can just click on the articles without all that if you want.

Merry Christmas!