so you've finished building your hoophouse.now it's time to design the interior space. there's no formula for designing the interiorof a hoophouse, but there are things that you want to keep in mind. first of all, there'sthe ergonomics of the people who use it. if you're fifty, like me, you might not wantto bend down so far. so raised beds and elevated work spaces are really valuable. secondly,once you've built this hoophouse you'll begin to understand just how incredibly valuableevery square inch is. therefore you're going to want to use every square inch. so aerialspace becomes essential. you can see that i've designed this potting bench which includesa compost underneath for in-house composting. the advantages of which are the convenienceof just putting your crop wastes and plant
residues right in. keeps the microbes andthe worms active all winter, adds a little heat to the hoophouse. it's all set up withmulti-use capabilities, perfect for the permaculturist. so you can see, once we had our locust postsin place, it was very simple to go on and build this boardwalk. the boardwalk servesas a, as a surface for plants, for potted plants, and for trays of seedlings in thespring. boardwalk also serves for us to access the vegetables. of course we had tomatoesup to thirteen feet, string beans up to thirteen feet, who wants to be balancing on a ladder,harvesting your beans and tomatoes. so the boardwalk serves as a plant habitat as wellas a human access point. you can see the raised beds, as i mentioned, make it easier for peopleto bend over and do the work. they also prevent
the compaction of soil, people know whereto walk, people know what's the bed and what's the path. the paths are narrow obviously;we don't want to use up our valuable gardening space. so the paths are as narrow as theyneed to be to get a wheelbarrow through, to come through to harvest greens, and we have,through the use of raised beds, maximized the root zone and we're able to grow largequantities of vegetables in this small space.