The Year-Round Hoophouse: Polytunnels for All Seasons and All Climates

Design and build a hoophouse or polytunnel, and grow abundant produce year-round in any climate

The Year-Round Hoophouse is the comprehensive guide to designing and building a hoophouse and making a success of growing abundant, delicious fresh produce all year, whatever your climate and land size. Chapters include:

• Hoophouse siting, size, style, frame construction, and tools
• Bed layout, soil, crop rotations, and extensive coverage of various crops for all seasons
• Organic solutions to pests and diseases
• Disaster preparation
• Tested resources for each chapter.

The Year-Round Hoophouse is ideal for farmers who wish to move into protected growing, as well as beginning farmers in rural and urban spaces. It is an essential reference resource for professors and students of courses in sustainable agriculture, as well as interns and apprentices learning on the job.

Growing in hoophouses - also known as high tunnels or polytunnels - reduces the impact of an increasingly unpredictable climate on crops, mitigates soil erosion, extends the growing season, keeps leafy greens alive through the winter, and enables growers to supply more regional food needs.

Pam Dawling has been farming and providing training in sustainable vegetable production in a large variety of climates for over 40 years, 14 of which have been hoophouse growing. Pam's first book is the best-selling Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres. Pam is a contributing editor with Growing for Market magazine, has written articles and information sheets for various biological farming publications, and is a popular speaker on growing vegetables at sustainable agriculture conferences and events each year. She blogs weekly at sustainablemarketfarming.com and monthly on the Mother Earth News Organic Gardening Blog. Pam does consultancy work for new and beginning farmers, and for 25 years was the manager of Twin Oaks community farm in Virginia, which feeds the 100 community members year-round. She lives and grows at Twin Oaks in Louisa, Virginia.