Liz:
Hello, and welcome to another episode/post of The Sunny Mary Meadow podcast/blog. I have a guest with me today. Her name is Ashley, and she is the farmer at Vail family farm, and she “influenced me” to buy a high tunnel. I did it because she did it. Actually, I mean, I was watching and looking for one, and then somehow, I found her on Instagram. I think it was probably using #hightunnel … I have no idea how I found her. But I know it was through her high tunnel. And she lives where it’s very windy. It’s not terribly windy here, but we had a really, really massive windstorm come through last spring, so I knew that I needed something sturdy. Plus, it’s a real person, so I could ask real questions too. And I think that’s how we became friends … I just kept asking her questions about her high tunnel over and over and over. They were very detailed questions about her exact high tunnel, even though she had it in her stories and her highlights. I just kept asking her more questions about it and ultimately ended up buying the exact same one. So, we’re gonna talk about high tunnels today. Hello, Ashley …
Ashley:
Hello, hello.
Liz:
Thanks for agreeing to do this. I think it was three days ago that I asked her, and she’s like, “Yeah, I’m in. Sure. What do we do?”
Ashley:
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. And I am happy to talk about the high tunnel because I think that’s probably one of the things I get the most questions about.
Liz:
What zone are you in, Ashley?
Ashley:
We are 6B.
Liz:
Okay, I thought you were 6. And then I thought briefly, maybe you were in 7? So, you’re 6. I’m in zone 4, so it’s a whole different beast up here. I have a really short growing season. So, the high tunnel is going to be huge. I’m actually considering buying a second one this spring already because the one I got was 16 x 50. I’m glad I didn’t get the 100-foot just because of where we were going to put it, and it probably would have been really overwhelming already. But we’re looking at buying a second one this spring already. That’s how awesome it’s been, and I haven’t even really reaped any benefits from it whatsoever yet.
Ashley:
Yeah, I’m actually considering buying another one as well.
Liz:
So what size is yours?
Ashley:
It is the exact same as yours. It’s 16 x 50.
Liz:
Yeah, we probably have the same size because you told me to buy it. It’s the higher one – I think that was the deal; it was taller, and then you can roll up the sides for when it’s really hot. That’s what’s really nice about it. So, Ashley, why don’t you tell us what a high tunnel is? I asked some of our followers on Instagram for questions, and I ended up with 14 questions. We’re not going to address all of them, but one of the very first questions was that, and it’s a great question.
Ashley:
So, I guess I’ve never had anybody ask me on the spot before, but it’s simply a tunnel made out of greenhouse plastic. Some people might call it a caterpillar tunnel. I think one of the other questions that people also ask is, “Why would you get this?”
Liz:
Exactly. People are like, “Why? Why don’t you just get a greenhouse or whatever?”
Ashley: Well, that’s an important distinction, too, because people often use a greenhouse and high tunnel interchangeably, but they’re actually very different. The reason we got the high tunnel, and I think I’m guessing it’s probably why you got it, is for season extension. We could extend our season with the high tunnel about a month in the spring and then two months into the fall. So, when you use a high tunnel, you’re actually going up a zone – a USDA hardiness zone. So, technically inside my tunnel is 7B. It’s not heated. It’s simply heated by the sun during the day. And a greenhouse generally has an artificial heat source, whereas a high tunnel or a hoop house (you might hear it referred to as that as well) is generally not heated. And the other thing you have to consider, too, with unheated structure, is that whatever the temperature is outside at night is what it’s going to be in your tunnel at night as well.
Liz:
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head for everything. Sorry to put you on the spot. Yep, exactly, season extension is why I did it, too. For me, with my frost dates, I have from about May 15th to September 20th without a frost. I have such a short growing season, so that was a big part of it. And then something that I did this year, and we’ll see how it pans out, is I planted 11,000 tulips – half are in the high tunnel, and half are outside just to spread out that work, spread out the blooms, and spread out the time of them. I do have a huge walk-in cooler, so that’ll help, but essentially it just spreads all that out. There are low tunnels that people talk about, which are basically four-foot rebar. And you can have low tunnels inside of your high tunnel. I will, I don’t yet because I haven’t planted my ranunculus yet, because it still gets down to zero. I think it’s even supposed to be -10 tonight; we’re about to get hit with 15 inches of snow tomorrow. Schools and everything are closed already for the next two days. So that’s fun.
Ashley:
I love that for you.
Liz:
Yeah, my parents are supposed to get 27 inches of snow in SW Minnesota. So, when we’re recording this, it’s February 21, 2023. So, for anyone that’s reading this blog when it’s posted around April, it will be when the high tunnel is actually being used, and the fruits of our labor are really paying off. So, you put low tunnels additionally inside of your high tunnel around things like your ranunculus. And I will do that too because it gets so cold at night. Hopefully, we won’t have to use them a ton. I know some people will just do that in the winter outside, but that’s not going to work for me. We have a foot of snow, we’re gonna get a foot-and-a-half in the next day. There’s no way that would work.
Ashley:
Right. Exactly. People have asked me that, too, like, “Why wouldn’t you just make a bunch of low tunnels?” Well, I could do that. But as you said, we live in a very windy environment. We’ll regularly have days where it’s gusting 40 miles per hour all day long. And that wears on stuff. We’re actually going to have to replace our plastic on our tunnel, and we’ve only grown in it for one year. So, that’s something to consider. My thought process was, why would I make a bunch of low tunnels and have to go around every time it’s above freezing? Like right now, it’s February, and it’s still really cold at night, but it gets above freezing almost every day. So, I would have to go around and draw up the sides and uncover several rows all over the place, whereas I can just do it once with a high tunnel, and I can have all of my stuff in one place. And that’s the reason why I don’t grow a lot of hardy annuals – because it gets cold enough here that I would still need to cover them. So, I stick with what is most profitable for us, and for us, that is ranunculus. In the spring, people cannot get enough, so that’s what I dedicate my high tunnel to. That’s what all the real estate out there is really dedicated to. However, after the ranunculus blooms, I will put in lisianthus, which is a crop that doesn’t need to be grown in a tunnel, it can do fine in the field, but … because of our wind, I go ahead and put it in there because it can tolerate the high temperatures in the summer, and it protects it from the wind. If we’re gusting to 60 miles an hour, one day, I could just drop the sides on the tunnel.
Liz:
Yeah, that’s actually why I’m considering getting a second tunnel. I accidentally bought 1,600 lisianthus plugs from Farmer Bailey. So, that’s going to be awesome. But remember, I’m getting married on October 6th, so I want them for my wedding. They can handle a light frost, so they’ll be fine. But I’m just trying to decide how many to put in the tunnel or out, and then I want some annuals in a tunnel. So, it’s just kind of a good excuse to get another tunnel – to have flowers for my wedding. And I’ll need the space, I’ll use it. So, we’re just trying to decide if we do it this year or do we wait? Or do we get a smaller one? I don’t know, we’ll cross that bridge in the next couple of weeks.
A couple of people did ask that question about the benefits between high tunnel and low tunnel, other than standing up, and I think we addressed that. Someone else asked, “Is this style Gothic style?” Yes, absolutely. We get pounded with snow … we got a storm of about eight inches of just wet snow with no wind a couple of months ago, and the plastic was sagging. We had to go in there with a shovel and hit it on the side, and it all just slid right off. It was perfectly fine. For sure, go with the Gothic style if you live anywhere with snow, and I think it yeah probably helps with the wind, too.
Ashley:
That’s what I’ve always wondered, is it a little more aerodynamic? It’s an increased cost if you’re gonna go Gothic, but if you are, you have to think about the price of the plastic itself for the tunnel. It’s $500-$600 for one layer of plastic. So, it was worth it for us to go ahead and go with Gothic as well. We don’t get near as much snow as you do – the most we’ve gotten at once this year was probably four to six inches. I just didn’t want to be I didn’t want to be like, “Oh yeah, I’ll just get the regular caterpillar (the circular one) and then get nailed.”
Liz:
I should clarify that Gothic is basically where the top is peaked, so the snow just really comes off it vs. the caterpillar, which is just rounded, and the snow kind of sits on top, and it doesn’t slide off as easily. So, exactly, was it worth saving $600 for the whole thing to collapse under the snow? Not a time to go cheaper.
Ashley:
Yeah, better safe than sorry for us.
Liz:
And you have raised beds inside of yours, right? I do not yet. We’ll see what happens, I don’t know. But again, by the time I got my tunnel ordered and built, there was already snow on the ground when we built it. We put the stakes in the ground, got the frame-part kind of put up, and we got all the rebar in the ground before it froze. We had everything measured out where it was gonna go, and then I planted the tulips. For us, it was mainly just timing – we were moving into our house, and we just did not have time to build the tunnel. So, I planted the tulips first, they’re right down the middle of the tunnel. It’s just stupid placement, as I’m going to try to plant the ranunculus, but whatever, I’ll figure it out, and it’ll be fine. I don’t have raised beds right now, I don’t know if I will, we’ll see.
Ashley:
I can share a little bit about why I put raised beds in for us. We had to bring in dirt to level out that area. Everybody says Kansas is flat, but it’s actually not. Our property is a bunch of hills and valleys. So, we had to bring dirt over that was just construction dirt from a friend who dug out a pool (they’re our neighbors). And it was not level, and it sort of sits on a slope … and I didn’t know the content of that dirt. I would have had to add a lot of compost and do a lot of reshaping. AND we have extreme weed pressure here on the Kansas prairie. I had seen other people put raised beds in their tunnels, and it just made more sense to do it that way. So, we went ahead and put them in, and I’m so glad we did. Because whenever we water or whenever we get a ton of rain, it pretty much floods in between the beds. If we hadn’t put them in the raised beds, I really think everything would have rotted, probably. But there are also some cons to raised beds – if you ever get a soil-borne issue, you’re gonna have to take all that soil out, and we can’t fit a wheelbarrow in there. So, we have to raise the sides as high as we can, and we just dump in new compost every year with a tractor. That’s a chore, it takes a couple of days, but I still think it was the right choice for us. So, you really just have to consider your growing area and your space, and you have to decide what’s best for you. Because what works for me may not work for other people.
Liz:
I think this alone is why I wanted to start this podcast/blog because you read all these things about what you’re “supposed” to do and then realize, “Oh, this doesn’t work for me.” You hit the nail on the head – everyone’s needs are so different based on where you’re at. And your needs can even be different from the needs of someone a mile down the road. I did not do raised beds because of the situation that we were in, but I don’t know, we’ll see. And in the new one that we end up doing, we might, but I don’t know. We ended up buying the door kits. I should point out that we both got our tunnels from Farmers Friend, LLC, but we’re not in any way sponsored by them (unless they want to … I mean, since we’re both singing their praises, so they should, but whatever …). We ended up buying the Dutch door kits for both ends, mainly because, honestly, at the time, we had more money than the time when it came to these doors.
Ashley:
And time is money.
Liz:
So, what that is, is it’s door kits at the end, and they’re pretty wide – they’re four feet wide. It’s nice that they’re Dutch doors, so you can open half for airflow. Although, I’m pretty sure pets can get underneath or whatever if they really want to get underneath the ends. But it should work out pretty well with those doors. If we do a second one, we’ll have one end open so that a tractor can go in there. I’m thinking if we ever did end up doing raised beds, we’d put them in the current one with the Dutch doors. It’s kind of up by my stem bar area, where the customers are, and the raised beds are prettier anyway. If we do one out in the field, like I’m planning, it’s got pretty good soil anyway. And then we’ll be able just to roll up the ends and get a tractor in there.
Ashley: That would be really, really nice, and that is one thing I want to add. I don’t think that the end walls that you got would have worked for us; we built our own. And I think that for us and our environment, that really helped the structural integrity of the tunnel. Because when I say we get wind, I cannot tell you just how much wind we get. We actually had a dust storm, and I’ve never seen anything like it in my 34 years of life. We clocked 89 miles per hour out here. I think if we didn’t have these wooden end walls that we built, it would have become a sail because they’re only rated for, I think, 50 miles an hour.
Liz:
Yeah, we don’t usually get a lot of wind like that up here. In SW Minnesota, where I grew up, we do, but up here, we don’t. This leads me to another topic. Someone asked about a high tunnel grant and if I bought it through that. No, I didn’t. Actually, last May, we had a storm come through with 90-mile-an-hour flatline winds, and it did a ton of damage. It collapsed a couple of my barns, so I literally bought my high tunnel with insurance money. I mean, we were picking up nails all over, and we’re still cleaning up buildings and stuff. Yeah, so I just exchanged the building for a building. That’s how I bought mine. I didn’t do a grant. And I thought, “Well, you know, usually it’s not super windy here.” And my fiancé was like, “Do you remember why we have that tunnel?” I said, “Well, that was a freak deal. It’s fine.”
Ashley:
Yeah, we didn’t apply for a grant either. I know a lot of people that have and have been really successful. I know you have to pay for it upfront, and then you get reimbursed. I personally did not have the time. I don’t know anything about grant writing. I didn’t have the time to sit and do that. But, maybe for the next one, I might consider it. I will also say, though, if you get a grant for a high tunnel, it has to stay with the property for a certain amount of time, like five years. That’s going to vary by state. But I never knew if another bigger, better farm was going to come along, and I didn’t want to pay for something and then have to leave it behind. I know a flower farmer in Washington that had to do that. So that’s another thing. And … I just don’t like being told what to do.
Liz:
Yeah, I know, I am the same way. I’m like, “Well, but then there’ll be rules.” I mean, that’s kind of like, I have this 23-acre cornfield that I rent out, and I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it. I mean, everything comes to mind, from a sunflower maze to wildflowers, to CRP, to SRP, and the Conservation Stewardship program or whatever. But then I’m like, “Don’t tell me I can’t touch my own land for 10 years. Heck no.”
Ashley:
I think it’s a great option for a lot of people.
Liz:
Exactly, exactly. We’ll leave it at that. Neither of us did it. Neither of us has any insight on how to do it. I think if you reach out, they’ll give you examples of previous people that have gotten grants.
Ashley:
You just have to reach out to your local NRCA extension office, and they’ll help you.
Liz:
Yep, exactly. Someone else asked, “Is there a fan for air circulation? No, there’s not … just the sides raise up as you need them to.
Ashley:
Do you have a hand crank that rolls up your sidewalls?
Liz:
Nope.
Ashley:
Yeah, I don’t, either. It’s all manual. And if I could do it again, I would definitely get one that has a crank. I don’t know if Farmers Friend has that option. I’m sure they do. I know lots of other hoop and high tunnel companies have that. And it’s really difficult sometimes, especially as I’m in a hurry in the morning trying to open them up. So, I would do that if I did it again.
Liz:
Yeah, especially if I end up getting the 100-foot one instead of the 50… So, that leads me to my next question that someone asked, “How much warmer is it than the external temps?” Two weeks ago, it was 36 degrees outside, and it was 66 degrees inside. And that was a warm, sunny day. Today, it was 6 degrees Fahrenheit for a high, and I ran out there just to check because I saw this question, and it was still 42 Fahrenheit in there still.
Ashley:
Yeah, it’s usually about 30 to 40 degrees warmer, depending.
Liz:
So that’s why you gotta roll up the sides …because those plants will fry. You still want them to think it’s spring, you don’t want them to think it’s summer, so you gotta roll up those sides. So, you gotta kind of baby them.
Ashley:
It pays off, though. It really does. I learned this in kind of a hard way. Last year, my plants did start to get a little fried. Thankfully, I saved them. But anytime it’s above 35, they have got to be ventilated. If you’re not ventilating, they’re gonna cook.
Liz:
So, here’s my next question … because, again, this is my first year having it with having just built mine. So, it gets to be the same temperature as the outside at night. How long does it take to drop? I mean, it’s not immediately if it’s 80 degrees in there to start with.
Ashley: Right. So, I try to get the sidewalls shut on a sunny day before the sun goes down to trap some of that heat in there, and I also try to get frost cloth on plants before the sun goes down. That does help, and also, the ambient air temperature is going to be what it is outside eventually, but your soil is going to be warmer.
Liz:
Exactly. I could probably plant ranunculus in there right now. It’s just so cold still, so I’m giving them another couple of weeks before I put them out there.
Ashley: That’s what I would do, too. If it’s getting down to -6 tonight, that’s pretty cold. I was really nervous about putting ranunculus in there because it’s such an expensive crop to grow … and it’s very profitable. I saw somebody in a zone that was colder than me do it (she was 6A), so I said, “You know what? We’re going for it.” I learned a little bit later that she has two layers of plastic on her tunnel and a fan that keeps those layers separated. So, her tunnel probably stays a little bit warmer than mine. But they really are a little more frost tolerant than we give them credit for. They bloom best, though, when it’s 50 degrees. That’s the other thing with these tunnels – even with the sidewalls up, we have vents on each end wall as well. And with everything open, it’s still going to be hotter in there than it is outside. So, I’m going to get shade cloth for the tunnel this summer and put that over because ranunculus really does bloom best when it’s 50 to 60 degrees.
Liz:
That was my plan – to get some shade cloth. Do you have any type of alarm or sensor out there for the temperature?”
Ashley:
No. I have a thermometer. During my first year growing in there, it got down to negative 10 degrees for about two weeks. It was a really severe polar vortex, and I thought for sure everything was dead. I had 2,000 ranunculus and 500 snapdragons, and they all looked terrible. So, I was actually out there with a propane heater, and it wasn’t doing anything. It was so cold that it wasn’t actually doing anything.
Liz:
But emotionally, you were doing something.
Ashley:
I cried for about 72 hours straight before I finally just accepted it. And they were fine.
Liz:
They have a will to live.
Ashley:
That’s what you have to remember. So no, I don’t have an alarm out there because it doesn’t matter.
Liz:
Yeah, I’m debating getting one, but I don’t know. I have to do some research to figure out one that’s Bluetooth vs. blah, blah, blah. Because it won’t get wi-fi out there. So, I don’t know. We’ll see. But ultimately, you just have to keep checking on it.
Ashley:
I guess it does matter. I have it out there just so I can see what the temp is, so I know if I need to ventilate everything or not.
Liz:
Well, that’s kind of a quick and dirty rundown of high tunnels. Is there anything else we should add? I mean, we could go on and on and on about what to grow and stuff like that. If you have anything else to add, Ashley, otherwise, I know Abbey’s got some questions. She always has questions, which is good, because if she’s got questions, people reading will have questions.
Ashley:
Yeah, I was looking at some questions, too. And I don’t see anything that we didn’t cover. So yeah, fire away.
Abbey:
I only have one, and that question is, “What is shade cloth?”
Ashley:
Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s a good question. Shade cloth looks like a large piece of a mesh screen. And it only allows a certain amount of ultraviolet light to go through the plastic. So, if you have something in a tunnel, and it warms up really fast in your zone, like spring, we get about two weeks of spring temperatures here in Kansas before it’s just straight to summer. And because these plants thrive in the cooler weather, you can put shade cloth over your tunnel. It’s not cheap, but it’s good. I think it’s well worth the investment if you’re trying to make sure that crop blooms as long as it can. You can put shade cloth over, and that will keep the temperature down, and it won’t be so hot in the tunnel.
Liz:
Yeah, I’m planning on buying some for my ranunculus. I’m gonna need it. Probably for the lisianthus, too. And then, if I get the second tunnel, I’m debating growing some mums for my wedding. So, I’ve been doing a ton of reading about them, and if I want them to bloom on October 6th, I’m going to need the shade cloth. Because they don’t bloom until they think it’s fall, and you need shorter days. So, it’s not even necessarily the heat, it’s the light. And actually, that’s more like straight blackout cloths. I think there are definitely some good options. Then if I can find something that can work with all of them. I don’t know. It wouldn’t hurt the tulips either if you’re worried that they’re all going to bust open. I don’t know.
Ashley:
Yeah, I don’t know how much that would help, though. Because it’s really more temperature with the tulips. If it’s above 60, that’s when they start to open. You mentioned just now maybe getting shade cloth for your lisianthus. They don’t need it, in my experience. They do not need it; they are so heat tolerant. I mean, it gets up to 120-130 degrees in the tunnel here in the summer, and they are amazing. They are like the best flower ever.
Liz:
How high do you have your sides up?
Ashley:
As high as I can get them up. You know, in July and August, the air is stale. I only shut them in the summer if we’re having an extremely windy day. I had snapdragons and lisianthus in there last summer that were not netted at all, and so they blew over, and they had a hard time with the wind. Some days, I wouldn’t be here right away to get it shut, or we’d have a thunderstorm out of nowhere, so I am going to net both of those things in the tunnel this year.
Liz:
Yeah. And I don’t know if I’ll get another one from Farmers Friend or not. I have an opportunity to possibly get a greenhouse. I have a friend that used to own a commercial landscaping company who has a greenhouse. He doesn’t know if it has all the parts. I think the brand is Poly Tech, but it has the capability of doing the two sheets of plastic with the vent between them. That’s gonna be up to the Flower Farmer Fiancé to watch YouTube videos and go to Menards one hundred times to buy spare parts. But we’ll save money. We’ll see, I don’t know, we’ll see. I don’t know what we’ll end up doing. But it would be nice to have two different options.
Ashley:
I see what you’re saying, and the reason I didn’t go with that, too, is because you have to have electricity down there to power the fan. And we could do that, but I just wasn’t on the table at that time.
Liz:
That’s the thing … you just have to kind of do the best you can with what you have. And you learn, and maybe your season is long enough.
Ashley:
Right, and I would say I don’t know that I would recommend getting a high tunnel your very first year, I would get a season of growing under your belt. That’s what I did. A lot of people said, “No, you need to wait like two or three years,” but I don’t listen. And so I did it after the first year. The learning curve is a steep one, but it’s definitely worth it.
Liz:
So, I’m going into year four, but year one was small. We’ll put it that way. I’d been sitting on the sidelines for two years, really watching, before I made the leap. So, I don’t know. We’ll just see. You gotta try it. You gotta kill some flowers, man.
Ashley:
Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Absolutely.
Liz:
All right. Well, thank you, Ashley, for joining. We already have plans to have her on again later, so I’ll just wait until then to tell you what we’re going to talk about, but it’s actually a really fun topic. Thanks for being here. Ashley, can you tell us real quick – how do we find you on Instagram and all of that stuff?
Ashley:
So, I’m really mostly active on Instagram. I don’t have TicTok or anything like that, as the youth would say. It’s just Vail Family Farm …V-A-I-L, like Vail, Colorado.
Liz:
Awesome! Well, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us, and good luck with your high tunnel.
Ashley:
Thanks for having me.
Liz:
Thanks for listening to/reading the Sunny Mary Meadow podcast/blog. I’m your host, Liz. If you like what you’re hearing/reading, please subscribe and rate us. You can also find us on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
You can subscribe to our email newsletter below. We love to hear any podcast-related feedback at our email podcast@sunnymarymeadow.com, and all other inquiries can be sent to liz@sunnymarymeadow.com.
Our guest, Ashley Vail, can be found on Instagram, and her email is thevailfamilyfarm@gmail.com
