When we bought an old house in West Rockport in the earlier ‘70s, I started a large vegetable garden on the side of a slope facing south. For the most part, it was successful, providing us and a few friends with fresh vegetables all summer. I soon learned that the short Maine season wasn’t going to bestow the needed sun and warmth for some of the produce I wanted, such as peanuts, celery, melons, and certain tomato varieties. So I asked Bill if he could make a greenhouse with the polypropylene material with which he had been experimenting. That was the rigid material he was using for his Polydome, a folding, portable disaster shelter. Instead he came up with a non-rigid polypropylene material that had solar qualities used in large produce-growing fields. And, of course, my greenhouse was a portable, folding, light-weight, easy-to-erect “tent” greenhouse that I could easily move around. He also made several small cloches for me to use on single plants that had zippers to open the “tent” for cooling as well as watering. Later, we tried to produce these for the garden market, but were told it was too expensive.

-Marilyn