Those are some cute gardeners you got there SteveO. My gardeners are too big and important now, so I have to water my own hops.
How important do people think it is to prune the root ball in the spring? I haven’t done so since transporting my hops to the back of my house last year. I can’t figure out if my lack of production this year is a result of fertilization process (used an organic liquid almost every time I watered - which wasn’t consistent), not getting enough water (using a drip irrigation system), or just the unusually hot year we have had in the Midwest.
Any comments on cutting back the roots in the spring would be helpful.
I’ve heard it’s best to root prune every few years, but I too was wondering what’s the best time to do it. I’m planning to attempt a hopyard renovation this fall. I’d like to hear the preferred season too.
Seems to me that they’d get a better start in the spring if they were all set to go, as long as the pruning doesn’t turn into a major hack job.
I harvested last night and brewed a fresh hop pale ale. The hop additions are in the colored bowls. I had about 4 times this amount left over to dry. These were first year Chinook and Cascade. I don’t think my English hops are going to produce much of anything useful this year. Thanks to my little hop helper we got them all picked last night.
very sad…harvested my hops, knowing quite well I was going to be dissappointed…3rd year cascade plant, 1.3 ouncs dried whole leaf hops…ugh…not even worth the space in my garden.
Sadly my nugget plant appears to have just as few cones as the cascades. Absolute shite!
[quote=“n8young”]very sad…harvested my hops, knowing quite well I was going to be dissappointed…3rd year cascade plant, 1.3 ouncs dried whole leaf hops…ugh…not even worth the space in my garden.
Sadly my nugget plant appears to have just as few cones as the cascades. Absolute ####![/quote]
It was a pretty pathetic year for me as well. I’m going to harvest, but it almost is not worth the effort. It’s on all third (or fourth) year plants (2 Cascades, 1 Centennial, and 1 Sterling). The Sterling has always been a poor producer, so I may dig it out and plant some rhizomes from the Cenntennial to have 2 of each.
Was it the weather? How has everyone else’s harvest been? A friend of mine’s parents grow hops at their place in Wisconsin and they said it was a bad year for them as well this year.
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Well, this is my first ever harvest. Cascade hops. I can’t remember how long I’ve been growing these hops, 5 years maybe.
This was the first year that they looked like they would be worth picking, and lately here the leaves were dying off big time, so I grabbed as much as I could before the cones started dying too.
I had 2 kids and my hot wife helping pick, while I drank beer and tried to help them.
I think I’m going to be able to harvest Colombus this year too. I would WAG theres twice as many Colombus cones.
Tett is still growing, for decoration apparently. :cheers:
The “trying to help” part convinced me. I’m a compassionate person so I do believe that you deserve a beer after all that “trying”. Keep up the good work and have a great weekend!!
The results are dried and tallied, netting a decent 12oz and small change.
Unfortunately, all I had on hand was cheap knock off ziplock quart bags,
I forced 2 oz into each bag,put a vacuum to them and squished them nice and flat, but they wont hold the vacuum.
I’m very reluctant to put them into the freezer knowing the bags are leaky,and not even freezer bags.
If I store them for a day or two in these bags while I shop for a food saver,
Should I leave the bags open to breathe/vent any extra moisture?
If you dried them down to an acceptable moisture content you shouldn’t have to worry about it. If you’re in doubt, I’d suggest leaving them vented but in the fridge rather than the freezer because If there is too much moisture remaining, the freezer will burst the cell walls and make a gooey mess like when you freeze lettuce. One of the things that many folks don’t take into account is that the center ‘strig’ is what contains most of the moisture so the petals/bracts will feel nice and crisp but that strig will continue to give up moisture unless it’s almost brittle at packaging time.
Whoops, meant to mention that I was just going to leave them at room temperature, out of direct light,with the bags vented.
I actually just stuck all the vented bags into my BK overnight.
And picked up some heavy freezer bags to give the vacuum sealing another shot.
If that won’t work, at least they’ll be in freezer bags.fingers crossed.
-edit:
Vacuum sealing fails on ziploc freezer bags. Must be sucking apart the seams.
However, leaving one small vent in the zipper,squishing flat against a table with one hand and zipping shut with the other works great, leaving a flat brick of hops.Duh!
Now, time to work up some APA recipes.
For a hard-up vacuum sealing method, try sticking a drinking straw into the corner of your freezer bag and zipping it the rest of the way shut. Squish out as much air as you can, then suck on the straw. Once you’ve pulled out as much air as you can, clamp the straw in your teeth and pull it out while you quickly seal up the zipper. Voila! Human-powered vacuum pump.
You’re in for some epic hop huffs, my friend! :cheers:
This is a repeat post from the Gardening forum, but I wanted to share with the hops-only growers too.
Well, I finally got around to taking some pictures of the garden this year. I did a lot of initial work before planting - I hauled and spread about 3" of horse manure across the whole plot, tilled it in, tilled up a large plot for a berry patch and new squash patch, waited about a month for the rain to stop, tilled again, and raked and shoveled the soil into raised beds. I also doubled my hops trellis by adding on a stretch.
Then I was finally able to plant in mid-June. After all that setup work, I was kind of burned out so I slacked off a bit and let the garden take care of itself for the most part. Luckily, things did pretty well and now we’re harvesting like mad.
Here’s the garden as it was last summer (the first year for this plot)
And here it is after the additions (2nd year).
Here’s a closer look at the hops trellis. Raspberry trellises are in the foreground, and the squash are pushing through under the hops.
And here’s a shot of how the hops are looking up top. They’re looking awesome this year!
Finally, looking out at the garden from the top of the trellis:
The lighting was kind of poor when I took these, but now you guys can at least see what I’ve been up to. Happy harvesting!
Holy crap man, that is fantastic!! Really beautiful.
I see you did not take a snowmachine out for a spin?
Those things are yard art in 'sota. :lol:
I have not had too much time for hops this year,
did manage to harvest the Crystal Tower, the hood, some of teh Zeus, some Cascade, some Mysteerine, and every freaking centennial I could find. The rest are just decor.
Cheers to full freezers!
to ElCapitan, did you cut your bines as they began to grow in the spring? I’m harvesting a great deal from two Cascade plants, but I basically let everything grow (2nd year) and mine are bushier but not as dramatic with the hops. Plus I had 3 harvests I had to deal with, Mid Jun, Mid July and now, Mid Sept.
I wonder if I truly would be better off cutting all the vines that begin to grow in the spring, then make sure I’ve only 3 or 4 main vines per plant vs. let everything go. I assume the plant puts too much energy into the vines and not as much into producing hops.
I’m still getting about 6 pnds of hops from the two plants this year (wet weight which equates to like 24 oz dry).
When do you, or anyone start letting the bines actually grow? How long do you cut them down in the spring before letting some of them start climbing?
I ended up with a little over 15oz of dried hops, mostly Columbus. I was happy with that.
I brewed my first pale ale using 5oz of my homegrown hops , will dry-hop with another 2oz. The wort smelled good, I am hoping these have good oil content. I’ll have enough for one more batch after this.
[quote=“El Capitan”]For a hard-up vacuum sealing method, try sticking a drinking straw into the corner of your freezer bag and zipping it the rest of the way shut. Squish out as much air as you can, then suck on the straw. Once you’ve pulled out as much air as you can, clamp the straw in your teeth and pull it out while you quickly seal up the zipper. Voila! Human-powered vacuum pump.
You’re in for some epic hop huffs, my friend! :cheers: [/quote]
My wife won’t allow me any hobbies that involve huffing.
She says she’s just looking out for me, but she can be a real Debbie Downer sometimes.
[quote=“Tom Sawyer”]I ended up with a little over 15oz of dried hops, mostly Columbus. I was happy with that.
I brewed my first pale ale using 5oz of my homegrown hops , will dry-hop with another 2oz. The wort smelled good, I am hoping these have good oil content. I’ll have enough for one more batch after this.[/quote]
What % did you estimate your Columbus to be? I ended up with 27 ounces, and as a guy who sorta got burned out on hoppy beers a long time ago, I’m thinking it’s going to be tough to use that much Columbus if its 14%.
But,on the plus side,I am feeling inspired with my freezer load of hops. So a PA and an IPA are on deck.
I did this last year and yeah, it’s fantastic if you like the smell of hops…I think I actually unsealed and sealed a few times just to get a bit more of it…LOL
My second year Cascade hops, last week immediately prior to harvest:
There were two twines running up to the eaves, each with two bines. You can see that the twine on the right failed, leaving the bines sagging and supporting themselves/hanging onto the left twine and bines. I lost a fair amount of the harvest on the right bines due to them being crimped and cutting off water/nutrients. The hops just wilted and got mushy and off-smelling. Overall, I harvested about 1.6lb wet, which dried down to 4.1oz. Probably would have been 2-2.5lb without loss. Everything I harvested smelled and tasted wonderful. I’m not even a big fan of pale ale or Cascade hops in general, but I’m excited to brew up something with them. I’m thinking a variety of porters and next years batch of barley wine.
The eaves at that point are maybe 10-11’ feet hight, and the bines grew several feet past the top. You can see on the left how thin it looks at the top, which is due to the bines folding back down. For the most part, they don’t like that. Next year I’m going to try setting it up so I can feed extra twine and let the bines coil up on the ground as they grow.
The rest of the garden:
Punkins, tomatoes, and peppers. Mmmmm. The Cascades are on the right. Last year I planted 3 Cascades after I saw them at Steins. This year, I dug up two of them and planted Willamette in the middle and 2 Ultras to the right. Not only was this year brutal in terms of heat and dryness, but it looks like something got into the garden and munched the heads off my baby bines. The Ultras seem to be thriving, sending out a new shoot and growing laterals, while the Willamette has grown only a little and slowly. They’re all quite small, though, nowhere near what the Cascades grew into last year. I’m hoping they’ll overwinter and be more robust in the spring.
[quote=“SolomonsCommune”]to ElCapitan, did you cut your bines as they began to grow in the spring?
…I wonder if I truly would be better off cutting all the vines that begin to grow in the spring, then make sure I’ve only 3 or 4 main vines per plant vs. let everything go. I assume the plant puts too much energy into the vines and not as much into producing hops.
[/quote]
This was the first year that I cut back the first shoots to promote stronger bines. I can’t say for sure that I saw much of a difference, to be honest. At this point, my hops have been in the ground for three years in this location, although some of them are now about 5-6 years old.
I typically train 3 bines per string. Here’s a somewhat unscientific comparison for you:
I added two new varieties last year - Chinook and EKG. The chinooks went in early, grew to about 14 feet, and produced 3.25 oz of cones. The EKG’s were planted on July 4th and grew to about 7 feet with no cones.
This year I pruned back the chinooks to 3 bines per twine, and ended up with full-height plants (about 17 ft) and probably 2 lb of dried cones. On the other hand, I let the EKG’s grow wild and rampant and bushy. They are only about 8 ft tall with a handful of small cones. So there you go.
Your answer is to cut back the first crop of bines if you feel like it and if they seem wimpy, then train 2-3 bines per string and pull the rest of the shoots out of the ground to concentrate the growth on your remaining bines. Then watch those monsters climb for the sky! Get ready to do some pickin’…
