Get the latest Flash player.
Summary: Wiggle wire is good garden technology for securing plastic sheets on hoop house or greenhouse frames. Build a hoop house with wiggle wire with a professional organic farmer in this free gardening video.
Views: 535 | Tags: gardening, make, build, hoop, greenhouses
Daniel Botkin Daniel Botkin is an avid organic gardener, micro-farmer and permaculture advocate who recognizes the timeliness of backyard agriculture and permaculture-style... read more
So now we're going to talk about attaching the skin to the frame of the hoophouse. This is a very important subject, because the skin is one single piece, and if you multiply all the square footage of this single piece of poly-plastic, on a windy day, you have essentially a powerful sail. And if it's not well secured, it can blow off and really take the whole hoophouse down. Okay, so essentially you're going to unroll the entire length of the plastic skin along the edge of the hoophouse. And you're going to, with help, on a calm day preferably, you're going to throw ropes up and over the cage, up and over the skeleton of the hoophouse, and then gently slide the first skin entirely over the top until you have covered the metal skeleton, leaving one foot or more of extra along the bottom edge. Now when I first was covering this hoophouse I thought "I can just use baton strips and nails and hammer it home, and that would be that, nice and cheap, nice and easy". But here's an instance where a little bit of technology goes a long way. I introduce you to "the wiggle wire". Wiggle wire is an ingenious system by which, through the use of an aluminum track, secured with screws to the hipboard, we can attach the plastic, in this case two plastic layers, using this small piece of wire. Let me demonstrate. So we start by inserting the first piece of wiggle wire, being careful of the eyes. The wiggle wire slides in and snaps into place locking the two layers of plastic very securely to the frame of the hoophouse.