Extend Your Growing Season With a Hoop House

In this episode of the Essential Cooking podcast, Tomm Becker of Nifty Hoops and Sunseed Farm joins Ann Delisi and Chef James Rigato to talk about the benefits of hoop houses for home food growers.

Hoop House DIY


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Courtesy of Tomm Becker
Courtesy of Tomm Becker

Spring is officially here in Michigan, and that means home gardeners are doing what they can to ensure a bountiful harvest this summer and fall.

But, there is one addition to the backyard garden operation that can extend the growing season into the winter — the hoop house.

Tomm Becker uses hoop houses to grow vegetables for his farm, Sunseed Farm, but also builds and installs them for home food growers with his company, Nifty Hoops.

The arched frame of a hoop house has a translucent cover that keeps heat and moisture inside, providing an improved growing environment for the home gardener.

With that added protection and warmth, crops that might normally stop producing food in the fall could produce into December.

In this episode:

  • What is a hoop house?
  • Extending the growing season for home food growers
  • Optimizing your yard for a hoop house
  • Controlling the pH level of your soil

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Author

  • David Leins is the senior producer of WDET’s daily news and culture program, The Metro. He has produced several award-winning podcasts and multimedia series at WDET including Tracked and Traced, Science of Grief and COVID Diaries, which earned a National Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Innovation. He previously led WDET’s StoryMakers program. David has an M.A. in Media Arts and Studies from Wayne State University, and a B.A. in anthropology from Grand Valley State University with a minor in Arabic. David teaches podcasting at Wayne State University and is an alumnus of the Transom Audio Storytelling Workshop.