Extend Your Season: Build A Cloche

Imagine how many vegetables you could grow if you had your own green house. . .

The ability to protect plants from dehydrating winds and destructive frosts can extend your growing seasons on both ends – allowing you to start your seeds earlier and continue your harvests later into the fall.

A Cloche is a miniature portable greenhouse. Originally invented in Italy in 1623, the first cloches were small glass jars that were placed over delicate young seedlings at night. The French later developed a distinct bell-shaped cloche that is still commonly used today. However, the jar style cloche proved difficult to use. It is essential to make sure that a cloche is ventilated during the heat of the day, so a jar cloche has to be tipped open every day to make sure the protected plant doesn’t get cooked in the hot enclosed environment. For this reason, many different varieties of cloche were developed over the years. The Barn cloche is a light-weight frame covered in clear plastic (or other material such as glass or lexan).

I use my cloche in the spring to get my vegetable and annual flower starts going early. I then take down the structure for the growing season. As autumn approaches, the cloche can be put back up to extend the harvest. The following are directions for construction of a simple and inexpensive cloche.

Materials: (all available at Home Depot or likely all available your local hardware store)

6 pieces of ¾” diameter pvc pipe, 10’ long

10 pieces of ½” steel reinforcing bar, 24” long

6 mil clear plastic sheeting

5’ of ½” wide Velcro strips

10, 1” diameter hose clamps

2 cedar 1 x 4’s

Directions:

Step 1: Use a string, 4 wooden stakes and a framing square to lay out a rectangle 5’ wide by 8’ long.

Step 2: Pound one piece of rebar into the ground at each corner and at 2’ intervals along the 8’ long side of your string box. The rebar should go into the ground about a foot – depending on how soft your soil is, and each bar should be angled slightly outward away from the center of your box.

Step 3: Slide the ends of each 10’ length of pipe over the rebar spikes, bending the pipe across the narrow dimension of your box to create an arched tunnel of pvc pipes. Slide one hose clamp onto each pipe before putting the second end over the rebar.

Step 4: Insert one hose clamp through the ring of each hose clamp that is already around each arching pipe. Cut the last piece of pipe to 8’ long and insert it through the hose clamps along the top of the cloche to create a support along the ridge of the cloche. Affix a strip of Velcro to the top of the ridge support pipes. Tighten the hose clamps with a flat-head screw driver.

Step 5: Cut a clear plastic sheeting to about 15’ long by 10’ wide and affix Velcro along the center of the long axis of the sheet. Connect the Velcro on the sheeting to the Velcro along the ridge line of the cloche and drape the sheeting over the structure. Weigh down the edges of the cloche with a 1x4 on each side and staple the plastic sheeting to the 1 x 4 (more weight may be necessary if you’re in a windy area).

Step 6: Fold up each end and trip to make a convenient door. Fold however works for you, but remember, you’ll have to vent your cloche in warm or sunny weather by opening the doors.

Special thanks to my neice and nephew for all their help in putting together my cloche this year!