Great question. I want to do some of the same, but my greenhouse is much smaller.

ekgrows: I finally found the picture I wanted to share. I use the aisles of my high tunnel for all my plants. I set them on the ground. I also use the vertical space for hanging baskets.

This year I am going to put half 55 gallon plastic barrels in the aisles and grow salad mix, arugula, and spinach/lettuce. As the plants start to get to big, I will remove the barrels and continue with my main crops. I am also going to plant a row of lettuce on each side of tomatoes and harvest it. I am also going to experiment with onions. I have even heard of a guy who grew cucumbers on the outside rows of tomatoes. He had roll up sides and harvested them that way. Once they started to get big and bothered the tomatoes, he ripped them out.

I feel as if I need to maximize the space and by using planters, and seedling in the aisle and companion planting, I am getting the biggest bang for the buck.

I even thought about attaching gutters or shallow trays to the sidewalls give me more room for lettuce and salad mix.

In this picture you can see zucchini, cucumbers, hanging baskets and seedlings, cherry tomatoes(in cages) and a double row of peppers.

Jay, I have plastic barrels in my little greenhouse. I filled them with water and use that to water my plants. It serves a double duty, the water helps to hold the heat overnight, plus the irrigation factor.

jr slick thanks for the good pix! Nice use of your space. I have seeds started in our hoop house. This is the first year having a hoop house so seeing others' experience is helpful.

OK - let's see if I can post a couple pictures. Just now created a photobucket account - here goes:

Yippee!!! OK - so this is our slightly smaller 12 x 72 hoop house. This house can hold about 5500 plants - (18 plants per flat). If I didn't need space for my potting bench and heater, we could fit about 6500.

Anyway, this is our set up, and you can see that once the benches fill up, the crops under the bench will get minimal sun. Our high tunnel is slightly wider, and will have 6' wide benches the length of the house. I think I'm gonna try to pre sprout some seeds, and stick them in the beds in the HT. I'll see what happens!

Thanks for the posts - and JRSlick - for the pictures. Plants are our main focus (being about 80% of our total sales), and we are growing about 30.000 this year! There is no way your set up of using the aisles would work for us, but it may have me rethink my space in my home hoophouse :) You sure are creative though - and have definitely maximized your space!

Myfamily - I have a tiny 8X14 hoophouse at home. I also use 40-50 gallon black garbage barrels as the "legs" for my benches. I fill it with water from my fish tank water changes. I also set a 5 gallon jug in my laundry tub, and put the hose from my homes de-humidifier into it. Otherwise - that water would just run down the drain! I get at least 1 jug a day - up to 3 if its really cold and dry, and I am home to keep an eye on the jug when it gets full. The hardest part is then carrying the heavy jugs up the stairs and outside, and dumping them in the greenhouse barrels. Especially when it is snowy and icy (like it has been here all winter!) By the time I need to use my house, the barrels will all be full.

Thanks!

I thought I would be smart last fall and filled all of the barrels with rainwater. Over the winter the barrels froze and I think 1-2 may be split. They're still frozen, but aren't holding as much as I filled them. My house is only 10x20 and unheated. I have a thermometer in the house and the temps are staying about 25 over the last week. I'll wait for another week before trying to take anything out to it. I have 1 room (full) with plants and I'm lowering the temps in that room to help harden the plants off.

Last year, I had some tomato plants in the house and it got down to below freezing. Some of the water in the trays of plant actually froze, but 90% of the plants survived. I don't feel comfortable pushing my luck this year, since this will be our main income from now on.

ekgrows,

Very nice picture and setup. Congrats! If you decrease the photo down to 800 x 600 it's a little better on posting.

Eric

Eric - thanks for the tip. The photobucket was all new to me - so I will try that from now on. Making a note in my "stickies" right now!

I admit - i scanned over the directions / recommendations to get the pic posted - oops!

Take a look at this video. His model is pretty amazing.

Eric

Here is a link that might be useful: 1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost

That is amazing Eric. I feel that I am doing nothing.

EKgrows: You do grow lots of seedlings. My model won't work very well for you. Do you sell those seedlings from your home or at a market?

I wish I could sell more seedlings. I just don't have the space for that I hope I can grow into that in the next several years.

I mentioned it before but I am hoping I can build a big garage/shed and put a big lean to greenhouse. I would heat this building with wood and propane. However, this is several years away.

Jay

Too funny Eric - I suspected that was going to be about growing power and Will Allen when I clicked on the link. I toured their operation about 8 years ago. It was much smaller then, and they had all the tilapia in a pool in one greenhouse. And to think - they are about 40 miles north of me! So glad to see that have continued to grow. A friend of mine used to work there too - I believe I have a couple of those 55 gallon drums that they raise the fish in in my back yard hoophouse right now!

JR - we wholesale plants to a couple Whole Foods stores, the Chicago Botanic gardens and a couple other small nurseries in the area. We also sell at 2 farmers markets, and picked up a few sales with garden clubs and various other groups. We are adding a retail location / farm stand this year - so are hoping to increase our retail sales.

Thanks to you all for your input - I learn a ton on this forum! I hope I remember to post my progress on planting under the benches before the season gets crazy, and I totally forget!

The pictures are very nice. The two things I've had to deal with are light competition and adequate ventilation to keep plants from disease.

I've determined that paths are the most wasted space in anyhigh tunnel setup and so I have basically eliminated paths and just lay boards between rows to walk on. Another way to utilize the vertical space is to use stringlines and mesh to allow higher growing plants like tomatoes and cucumbers to utilize that space, especially some cherry tomato varieties that will climb to 20+ feet in a season. In fact I believe utilizing the high tunnel framework as support is the number one benefit of those structures.