Comment by bikelang
Can you tell us a bit more about your greenhouse/hoop house? I’m in the CO front range - so very dry, cool nights, but quite hot in the sun. Our patio is getting re-done and I’m thinking about how I might rebuild our planters to better support growing tomatoes.
Sure. I intend to put it in a blog at some point.
I'm several hundred miles due south of you in SE New Mexico, also right along the rocky front range, so similar climate with intense sun and day/night temp swings, although we are much warmer obviously.
The frame of the shade house in the video is cattle panels and the cover is called "aluminet". The cattle panels are hooped and tied to a wooden frame with posts sunk in the ground. It started as a simple 10'x20' structure but I kept adding rooms and and other portions are not hoop type. Someone gave me a 10x10 frame that is very tall from an old "greenhouse" so I tacked that on. The doors are used screen doors also covered with aluminet. It's been an ongoing process over years. But it hasn't been expensive, I would say under $1000 for the entire structure including redoing the cover once. The cover is secured with a zillion zip ties and has nylon straps to keep it from flapping (we get extreme winds).
There is a lot more I could say on the subject but hopefully that gets you some things to look into.