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["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

Actually, you can do something like this a lot cheaper if you will simply cover your plants with old sheer curtains.  Nylon is best but some of the whiter heavier weight fabrics will keep a bit more of the cold off them.  You don't need the tunnel supports at all, just something to hold the edges down in the wind.  I do this for my greens, adding an old sheet when it gets really cold, and I have greens all winter.  I cover strawberry plants with sheets to keep off a late frost, but I can certainly see that if I had them covered with curtains all spring, they'd start growing and blooming sooner.  The really nice thing about using fabric rather than plastic is that you don't get as much heat buildup to increase evaporation, and the rain falls right through the fabric, so there is really no need for irrigation.  Of course, you can buy Reemay for this purpose, but I found that one little cat playfight in the the Reemay can be the end of it.  Used curtains come cheap and last for years.     Donna