High tunnels (also known as hoophouses) are becoming a larger part of the market farming scene. We use them to give us early tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other summer delights. We also use them to extend our summer season on many vegetables weeks past first frost. Finally, we use them to grow crops throughout our winters with no heat other than what the low winter sun gives us. We thought we knew just how important the high tunnels were to our farming operation. But the spring and summer of 2003 has given us a new appreciation for the importance of our high tunnels.

As with much of the country east of the Mississippi, we were blessed with plenty of moisture for our spring planting. We got a drier window, and got our outside plantings in right on time – and never needed to turn on the drip tape we always lay with them. Then rains came just as we finished planting – perfect timing. The problems began when those “perfectly timed showers” continued to fall – every day or two – for weeks and weeks. My Granddaddy always said “a dry year will scare you to death, but a wet year will starve you to death”. In the flat Ohio River bottomland in western Kentucky, wet land stayed wet a long time. But this year, we experienced the truth of that statement even on our rolling hills.

Many crops rotted before they even broke the surface – potatoes, beans, two planting of sweet corn. Others, just plain drowned – especially in lower parts of the fields. And nothing grew the way it should. Saturated soil is just not conducive to good plant growth. Well, except for weeds and grasses. They grew exceptionally well. And, with the almost constant rain, cultivating for weeds was impossible. Even pulling by hand brought up huge chunks of mud with the roots. Then, unless all weeds were carried out of the field, they just re-rooted with the next rain. Finally, soil too wet to cultivate is soil too wet to plant, and planting dates for both seeds and transplants came and went – with no planting done.

So, by mid June, we had literally nothing growing in our outside fields that we could harvest for market. That’s when we realized just how important the tunnels are to our operation. From our high tunnels we were cutting lots of flowers for bouquets. Our tunnel tomatoes were producing 200 plus pounds of tomatoes a week for sale – gorgeous, vine-ripened tasty tomatoes. We also had squash and cucumbers – although our outside ones had never produced anything. We even found that we could grow mesclun and Jericho lettuce – even without shade!

All this after early May strawberries that didn’t melt into goo because of incessant rain, (like our outside berries) and potatoes that produced 75 pounds in 18 feet of bed, which was much more than the outside ones, that although even chitted, rotted in the ground. Chitting is the process of allowing the potatoes to green up and sprout before planting them (leave them in a single layer in bright light, not direct sun, for about 2 weeks). That way, you know you have a viable plant. The English do it as a matter of course, and we had hoped that it would forestall planting potato pieces that wouldn’t sprout. Maybe next year won’t be so wet! It did work well in the tunnel plantings – every hill had a plant.

In short, without the tunnels, we would have had a disastrous growing season. With them, we had a good, although not great, one, and we are looking forward to a (hopefully) drier and successful fall and winter. Now, if we could just cover the whole farm with high tunnels…

Alison and Paul Wiediger own Au Naturel Farm in Pleasureville, Kentucky. They have written a book with all the details of their high tunnel growing. “Walking to Spring” is available from the online store on this web site.