Homemade Garden Tunnels

If you’re a gardener you’ve most certainly heard of a garden tunnel to extend your growing season. They can protect your young plants from frost and insect invasion. Here’s a twist on how we made our own garden tunnels.

When Marc was a young boy growing up on his family farm in Kentucky, his Dad would cut small sections of fencing and formed circles around plants so he could train them as they grew. After getting back into gardening later in life, Marc wanted to do the same, but couldn’t find the right kind of fencing. He bought some remesh (concrete reinforment – looks similar to a fence). In trying to mimic his dad, he bent the remesh into a half circle but when the cage landed on the ground in tunnel fashion (as in the picture below) he thought he’d go with it.

Uses:

• Use them with row cover to extend your growing season.
• Create a small greenhouse by covering with a clear plastic.
• Use them as cages to help support your plants as they grow. 

This really works great with tomato plants. Once they are hardened off, I plant young seedlings in the ground and use a cage over the bed with row cover to protect them. I've used rocks, dirt, wood, and sand bags to hold the row cover down, but just recently have been using clothes pins to fasten the fabric to the cages. It seems to work pretty well. You can also put the cages end to end if you have long beds to create one long continuous tunnel. I keep the cages on throughout the entire growing season. When we’re all clear of frost for the season, I take off the row cover and just let the plants grow up through the cages. It also works well with any vining plant like squash or cucumbers. 

Making the Cages:

• It's a good idea to have two people - one to hold the remesh and the other to do the cutting.
• Use small bolt cutters to cut the remesh.
• Buy or salvage 5' remesh- it's cheaper if you buy it by the roll (you can purchase a 5' by 50' roll of remesh at Menards for around $50 - this will make 10 cages). 
• Cut the remesh in 5' sections, making sure your cut is made down the middle of the squares so that you have sharp ends to anchor your cage into the ground. (As shown in the picture on the right).
• Make sure the remesh is bent in a half circle so it will fit over your bed. These cages should fit over a 3' wide bed, but are adjustable, so that you have a little room to play.

We've found these cages have been quite sturdy for us, even in our extreme environment (high winds and heavy snow).  One thing to look out for is unsmooth edges on the remesh. This can cause the row cover to tear in high winds. We have had this happen and have used a file or angle grinder to smooth out any rough edges on the remesh. It seems to have helped. 

The garden is always evolving and we try to make improvements whenever possible, but we feel we've found the garden tunnel that works best for us. It's relatively inexpensive, sturdy, versatile and will last a long time.