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RE: Cold Hoops Mid Winter Update - More Insights from The Poly Low Tunnel Experiment
Not sure of the Egnlish word for it, but there's this thin permeable fabric that's been used in agriculture as a cold weather "blanket" for crops. In Europe is know by one of it's brand names - Agrivelo. If you can stretch a length of that inside the tunnels, it would help.
Also, it's a breathable fabric, so water won't accumulate on the underside of it and then freeze, which is far more problematic for plants than the temperature itself. For example, a lettuce would survive -5C, but it's leaves would die if there's a light moist freeze at 1C.
Yep in American English the popular brand name is Agribon, of course there are others. I just learned from Eliot Coleman in researching for my latest cold frame post that the material is called spun-bonded row cover fabric (what a mouth full).
I did use some of this material over the peppers underneath the hoop cover to keep them longer into the fall. It did help a lot and with a few warm days that popped out from the colder days we got some extra pepper growth and ripening, which wouldn't have been as pronounced without the fabric. Awesome!
But I chose not to use it in these tunnels for the new winter crops to keep things simple and because I wanted to see what would happen with just the plastic alone.
I've used agribon in urban agriculture quite extensively in hot weather (in Zones 9-10) and it also helps a lot there as well, to keep the temperature cooler in the summer months. It wasn't immediately intuitive to me but it works well in both extremes of hot and cold! Whereas with the plastic cover you'd bake your veggies in the summer if you kept it sealed.
Did not know about the use in hot weather, thanks! Agreed on keeping it simple! We use a bit of the product only while germinating seed sawn directly in the ground in a cold tunnel. It speeds it up with 7-10 days in late March around here, using tomatoe and peppers seeds.
Nice! That's a great benefit to get your plants started faster.
I hate spunbond for its texture but without it our tomatoes would die from summer periodical frost