If you browse through our YouTube channel (Backwood Basics), you will notice that I enjoy bending pipes. I bent the hoops for our 2 hoop houses (I guess they are technically called "bows", but then it should be called a bow house). I also bend tubing to make our arbors, our chicken cage, and now our raised bed hoops.
The go-to material for most folks is the 10' lengths of flexible pvc pipe-generally in the 1/2" to 3/4" range. I admit to using the stuff myself, back when Conor wanted an aviary for his quail. It was used one season, then sat out in the woods, where the snow collapsed it, and the pipes shattered and degraded in the sun. The whole works had to be cut-up and hauled to the dump.
Well, with age and experience comes (eventually-sometimes) wisdom. I now use 1/2" metal conduit, which is $2.50 to $3.50 for a 10' length, depending on whether or not it is on-sale. So, it's as cheap as the pvc, but is durable enough to last a lifetime, rigid, strong, and 100% recyclable. The trick has been how to bend the stuff so the hoops are uniform, and look decent.
This is what this story is all about-making a bender and using it to shape your own hoops. Once you have this bender, it should also last forever, and it is simple, and economical to build.
Whether you choose to use row cover, sheet plastic, shade cloth, or a blanket to ward-off an early frost, having hoops over the garden bed is a slick way to go; especially here in Northern Minnesota, where July has been our only frost-free month. Row cover is especially effective at keeping the cabbage worms at-bay.
So watch this video, to learn all you need to know about bending hoops. Since we have not yet established a following on YouTube, we would also appreciate having you, and your like-minded friends, subscribe to our channel. A follow-up video will show how we attach our row cover.