Hoop house with 3m wide GrowCover

Building a frame to cover with GrowCover fabric Gardeners are versatile people and many will use their ingenuity to construct a frame to support the GrowCover . There are many options using recycled materials or other materials easily available to buy. We made our first hoop house frames with recycled agricultural poly pipe and used an old fire guard to cover seed propagation trays. Now we mainly use 25mm poly pipe but have also used 20mm white pvc plumbing pipe and PVC electrical conduit which is good because it is flexible. Our metal frame kits were very popular but we have sold out. We are hoping to offer an altenative design before too long.

Work out how much fabric you need

Below is how we make our hoop frames. They are simple to build, are flexible in size and can be moved easily

We make our frames to fit the length of garden beds. They are very easy to take down and re-erect anywhere.
If your garden bed is too long for the standard fabric sizes you can buy custom cut lengths to fit. Remember to allow for the height of the hoop house at both ends.

Making a supporting hoop frame

You can use GrowCover without a frame, just throw it over the plants as a floating row cover.This is quite handy when you have fruiting plants like tomatoes that need protection from birds or a newly seeded area which benefits from the extra water retention.

In our experience for growing vegetables a frame works better. Just lift the fabric when you need to weed, harvest etc. and clip it to the frame to keep it out of your way.

For vegetables grown for their fruit remember to lift and clip the fabric up during flowering to let insects in to pollinated the plants. Replace the fabric again after flowering or overnight too if you wish.
For more information on pollination you might find the Harvest to table web site interesting.

Poly pipe hoop frame

We use 25mm rural black poly pipe which is rigid enough to support the structure and smooth so that the GrowCover does not catch, making it easy to lift on or off. You can also use white pvc plumbing pipe which is rigid and needs joiners to make a frame or U V resistant grey pvc electrical conduit which is flexible and does not need joiners.

For a poly pipe frame we cut the poly pipe 20 centimeters shorter than the width of the GrowCover fabric so there is a ground flap left over of 10 centimeters each side.

• For 2m wide GrowCover each hoop needs to be 1.8 m
• For 3m wide GrowCover each hoop needs to be 2.8 m
• For 4m wide GrowCover each hoop needs to be 4.8 m

If you use PVC electrical conduit in a raised bed you can make the hoops longer and push the ends into the ground

Fot tall frames we brace the sides with horizontal rods joining the hoops together.

As a rule of thumb we install the hoops of poly pipe at intervals of about one metre, then adjusted to the length of the bed. 

We find this gives good stability while giving easy access to the plants growing under the GrowCover hoop house.

The width of the frame used for the the GrowCover is up to you.The narrower you make it the higher the hoops at the apex as long as the hoops are not longer than the chosen fabric width.

To hold the hoops in place we push (or hammer) galvanised metal rods 40 centimeters long into the ground leaving about 15 centimeters above the surface. Normally the rods would be perpendicular, but if you decided to have a very wide and low hoop tunnel you may find it better to lean them slightly inwards.

The pictures above show poly pipe sliding over a metal spike to support a hoop.

Once all the hoops are installed you are ready to cover with the GrowCover fabric.

Ways to secure GrowCover to poly pipe frames and the ground
We allow a 10cm flap of fabric on each side at ground level that this can be held down by bricks, pegs, lengths of timber or earth staples to make it more difficult for pests to crawl underneath and chomp on your young plants.

Jumbo clips are exceptionally easy and quick to attach and replace and do not tear the fabric. We use them to clamp the GrowCover fabric to 25mm poly pipe hoops. They come with standard or extra grip for windy conditions or thick fabric such as shade cloth.

Butterfly clips can be attached to the edge of the fabric and pegged into the ground. Double over the fabric for extra strength.

Cut lengths of poly pipe. You can try cutting short lengths of poly pipe, splitting them lengthways and inserting them over the fabric and onto the frame pipe. There is I think a commercial version of this concept.

Use golf balls and rubber spline ( used in fly screens)

Securing the ends
The fabric at the ends of the frames can be secured in a number of ways, the simplest is to put a loose piece of timber or bricks on the end  or roll the timber up in any spare fabric to secure it more if you live somewhere windy. Alternatively you can gather the fabric together tie with string or a strong rubber band and peg into the ground.

Methods we have tried are shown below.

A garden stake can be inserted into a seam at the end of the fabric to keep the end flaps in place.
This also makes it easy to handle the fabric when removing or installing. If the stake is wider than the cloche or hoop house it stops the wind blowing the ends inwards.

Butterfly clips can easily be attached to the fabric, threaded with tape or string, pulled together or spread out and pegged into the ground. Remember the fewer pegs you have to remove for tending the plants the better.

Make a seam and thread with tape or string (rubber spline used for fly screens works well ) to gather the fabric together and peg it into the ground.

Use Earth Staples - the easiest of all, and keeps the fabric secure against wind and small animals.
Make your own using butterfly clips and weed mat pins.

For tall frames it is best to draw the fabric from the sides to meet in the middle. Secure the overlapping fabric at ground level and then at the top of the frame.

See the illustration below on securing the ends vertically

You can of course put more than one frame in a wide garden bed, for example if you prefer to have two small frames side by side instead of one big one it works just fine.

Just experiment and see what works for you. If you are growing up against a wall other designs would work - something like a roman blind perhaps.

Below shows how to fix the ends of a tall frame with a GrowCover fabric overlap

To work out length of GrowCover you need:
The length of fabric you need depends on how you will close off the ends.

For tall frames it is better to draw the fabric from the sides to the centre of the ends and fix to a stake and gather the loose fabric near the top together into a clamp.

The length of fabric needed for tall frames is the frame length + frame width+ an extra 2Ocm for overlap to securing the ends.

For low frames it is easiest to drape the fabric over the ends and down to the ground.

The length of fabric needed for low frames is frame length + twice frame height + an extra 2Ocm for securing the ends.

Example of a low frame: 4 metre frame 95 cm high you need 6.3 metres of GrowCover
or 4m + 95cm+ 95cm+ 40cm = 6.3m.

This allows 20 cm of fabric at each end that can be secured with butterfly clips, timber, bricks or an earth staple

Or use the fabric calculator as a guide