Between trying to get a garden in and the rain, its put me behind on my hops. Spent time today between rain showers weeding, mulching, and trimming my hops. Here is a couple of pics of things getting out of hand just before their “haircut” and some much needed weeding. Mt Hood is almost to the top of my poles, Horizon is approx. 6 1/2ft., and US Goldings is the slow one and just starting to reach my lines.
[attachment=1]04-14-12 Mt Hood-2.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=0]04-14-12 Horizon-2.jpg[/attachment]
Wire is about 8’ tall. Left to right, soon to be centennial, chinook, EKG(lagging), nugget, Zeus.
About to add 3 more plants, Mt. Hood, Centennial, and a Cascade. My Cascade and Centennial didn’t survive the transplant. 
Ordered from Great lakes hops, hopefully the plants do well!
Next step is to build in separators for the plants, since my dumba$$ didn’t do that when I built the planter… :oops:
Just as I had predicted we had a frosty period of about a week after the hops had gotten about 2 feet high. It is expected since we usually don’t get hops growth until the middle of April and we are very early this year.
Anyway, the effects of the re-frost were interesting.
The cluster totally froze back. All that remained were the stems. All leaves were browned and fell off. I am waiting for new growth at this time.
The saaz retained lower growth leaves but as soon as it warmed the shoots started again.
The interesting part is that the Galena seemed to be unaffected by the cold weather and now I have bines about 2 feet up the cord.
I am sure all plants will at sometime catch up. it is interesting to see that each variety has different tolerances. this is good because the weather is never something you can bet on.
I had a bit of a frost scare this morning. When I got up there was frost on my deck but it sets lower than my hops and garden and the temp on my garden read 34F. Looks like all is well, I hope :roll: . I was pretty worried since my Mt Hood has already outgrown my 16ft poles and my Horizon is close to 9 ft. My US Goldings is lagging behind.
Where in Missouri (or should I say Missoura) are you BB? My father grew up in a super small town in the north named Milan. Spent a lot of time back there as a youngster.
Well, here we go.
A friend of mine has been dying to do something with his property. He owns quite a few acres 10 min away from me. He saw my first year hops and after much thought, research and deliberation decided to jump in headfirst into growing a test bed which may or may not get expanded. I guess it all depends on if we can get a couple local brew pubs interested in taking the hops off our hands.
We went back and forth on how we wanted to set everything up. We decided on tent complexes, but placed the 25ft treated pilings in a straight line so that later, if we wanted to, could adapt it to more of a commercial approach.
We tried to do it on the cheap. We split a bunch of wood for a friend of ours that runs a marine construction company. He in turn, at no cost, supplied some decent used pilings, as well as a bobcat with an auger on it. We used a farm tractor with a bucket, lashed the pilings to the bucket and set the posts using the bucket. Eyelets were attached around the top of the piling before setting.
There is a pond right next to the hopyard, as well as a 55 gallon drum/truck/fill up at the house operation we’ve been using for water for the time being. The hop yard is on a decent hill so we’re thinking about stockpiling water above, and setting up a gravity fed drip irrigation system. It’s amazing the amount of material we have to work with in all the barns and such.
Our next job is to stake/run line for the hops. We’ve pitched in and bought a crapload of hop twine. Our plan is to have enough line to go from the plant, up to the eyelets, then back down to be tied off so we can raise and lower individual lines for harvest or to keep things from getting tangled.
My friend ordered and payed for the hop rhizomes, which was the bulk of the money spent. He ordered 40 rhizomes but they send quite a few extras… I’ve never seen that before ha… We ended up with 50 total. Columbus, Nugget, Williamette, Chinook and Cascade.
One problem we may encounter is the fact that we’ve got 5 varieties and only 4 poles.
Each half circle on the ends includes only one variety each, Nugget on one side of the hop yard and Chinook on the other.
One full circle hill is 3/4 Cascade and 1/4 Williamette. The other full circle hill is 3/4 Columbus and 1/4 Williamette. They are separated and spaced accordingly in each hill to keep the varieties away from each other, I just fear that if they make it the 19 or 20 ft up to the top, we may have a tangling problem. We definitely don’t want mixed up varieties but with our lines being able to be lowered, we may be able to extend the few Williamette lines by staking them a second time closer to the pole, thereby gaining an extra 6 to 8 feet of line to climb before they get to the top. We’re still trying to figure everything out.
The hops are just now poking through, with some of them already 6 or 7 in tall. Not bad since they were planted just 3 weeks ago. We will see what happens as time goes on. It’s going to be quite a bit of work. Any and all advice is appreciated. I’ll update from time to time.
Springfield
Thats one heck of a project you guys have taken on.
yeah that’s gonna be one hell of a harvest!!!
I’m actually starting to worry ha. My first year hops here at the house last year did alright. I probably got a pound and a half of wet hops (about 6 oz dry) from two Cascades and the Magnum really didn’t do much of anything. I can only imagine how much, even in a first year harvest, we’d get from 50 rhizomes. I don’t even want to think about 2nd year…
We’ll definitely be calling in some favors from friends and getting family help with the harvest. If it gets bad enough we’ll get the local small Homebrewing club involved and offer hops in lieu of payment :cheers:
@ solomons
Have you and friend decide to build an oast to dry the hop? If you are please post photos too. Thanks
Mt Hood has outgrown its pole at 16ft and started to fall down and climb itself again. Horizon up to around 10ft. Us Goldings seems to be stunted this year.
[attachment=1]Mt Hood 04-26-12.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=0]Horizon 04-26-12.jpg[/attachment]
Nice looking hops BB. You’re definitely way ahead of me height-wise. Have you pruned yours yet at the bottom?
[quote=“andjenliang”]@ solomons
Have you and friend decide to build an oast to dry the hop? If you are please post photos too. Thanks[/quote]
To andjenliang:
I don’t think we’ll be building an oast that has heat to it. We’ve got an old tobacco barn on the property that’s got the right set up to run what I’d call the salad box drying method but on a bigger scale. Here’s a youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_7TnuuDS3o of me making some small salad boxes for my mother to use in a master gardening event. All it consists of is 2x4’s and rat wire or screen. I’d just build bigger scale. 3ft by 6ft or something. Real easy to make, will set up on ‘rafters’ or poles in the barn and we’ll put a fan underneath them for air circulation. Should only take 3 days tops depending on humidity outside but that’s usually gone in early fall here in Maryland.
Edited to add:
Yes, Hops also enjoy Herp Alpert
Yes that was a very old Ball Peen Hammer ha! I was at my mothers house… that’s what she had for a hammer!
Thanks. They’ll do great up to the point that the 105F temps set in.
I trimmed to lower 24" of leaves when the bines reached 6-8ft.
[quote=“SolomonsCommune”]Where in Missouri (or should I say Missoura) are you BB? My father grew up in a super small town in the north named Milan. Spent a lot of time back there as a youngster.
Well, here we go.
A friend of mine has been dying to do something with his property. He owns quite a few acres 10 min away from me. He saw my first year hops and after much thought, research and deliberation decided to jump in headfirst into growing a test bed which may or may not get expanded. I guess it all depends on if we can get a couple local brew pubs interested in taking the hops off our hands.
We went back and forth on how we wanted to set everything up. We decided on tent complexes, but placed the 25ft treated pilings in a straight line so that later, if we wanted to, could adapt it to more of a commercial approach.
We tried to do it on the cheap. We split a bunch of wood for a friend of ours that runs a marine construction company. He in turn, at no cost, supplied some decent used pilings, as well as a bobcat with an auger on it. We used a farm tractor with a bucket, lashed the pilings to the bucket and set the posts using the bucket. Eyelets were attached around the top of the piling before setting.
There is a pond right next to the hopyard, as well as a 55 gallon drum/truck/fill up at the house operation we’ve been using for water for the time being. The hop yard is on a decent hill so we’re thinking about stockpiling water above, and setting up a gravity fed drip irrigation system. It’s amazing the amount of material we have to work with in all the barns and such.
Our next job is to stake/run line for the hops. We’ve pitched in and bought a crapload of hop twine. Our plan is to have enough line to go from the plant, up to the eyelets, then back down to be tied off so we can raise and lower individual lines for harvest or to keep things from getting tangled.
My friend ordered and payed for the hop rhizomes, which was the bulk of the money spent. He ordered 40 rhizomes but they send quite a few extras… I’ve never seen that before ha… We ended up with 50 total. Columbus, Nugget, Williamette, Chinook and Cascade.
One problem we may encounter is the fact that we’ve got 5 varieties and only 4 poles.
Each half circle on the ends includes only one variety each, Nugget on one side of the hop yard and Chinook on the other.
One full circle hill is 3/4 Cascade and 1/4 Williamette. The other full circle hill is 3/4 Columbus and 1/4 Williamette. They are separated and spaced accordingly in each hill to keep the varieties away from each other, I just fear that if they make it the 19 or 20 ft up to the top, we may have a tangling problem. We definitely don’t want mixed up varieties but with our lines being able to be lowered, we may be able to extend the few Williamette lines by staking them a second time closer to the pole, thereby gaining an extra 6 to 8 feet of line to climb before they get to the top. We’re still trying to figure everything out.
The hops are just now poking through, with some of them already 6 or 7 in tall. Not bad since they were planted just 3 weeks ago. We will see what happens as time goes on. It’s going to be quite a bit of work. Any and all advice is appreciated. I’ll update from time to time.[/quote]
If my own experience means much, you’ll have a year or two (or more) before the plants are mature enough to send their bines all the way to the top. I’ve done mine on a central pole with the lines going to the top and then back down along the pole with extra line beyond that. This way I can lengthen the lines if bines threaten to reach the top and grow around one another. I stake out the slack out away from the central pole.
Hopefully you have time to figure out the picking, drying, and packaging of the crops as production goes up. This, and finding a market, will likely be the trickiest part of going commercial in scale. There is push support by the U. of Vermont to re-establish hops as part of our agricultural mix where I live. They have funded the design & construction of small scale pickers and balers. At their annual conference, there was quite a bit of talk about establishing a market for this niche product, and everyone agreed that first and foremost the product has to be very very high quality and offer something the established producers do not. Search UVM extension hops and I’m sure you can find out a lot. Best of luck to you!
Got a first year Nugget rhizome sprout. It now joins my already-sprouted second year Mt. Hood and Chinook (one each). Hopefully the other rhizomes i planted start popping up soon. Sadly, PA weather’s been kind of wonky lately.
Did you get hit with that late season snow storm last week?
No snow here…just freezing cold temps and frosts.
Been way frosty here too, In northeastern NY. I have my four starts in buckets that I bring into my unheated garage for the night. They have survived a few nights that weren’t supposed to be frosty, but were, and are only about 18’ tall still. I will pull the trigger and bed them this weekend and hope for the best. Around here we can get killing frosts as late as June first.
Crazy that people still have frost, and my chinook already has cones! I’ll try and get a picture tomorrow…
One of my Mt. Hood plants is a beast. My Chinook doesn’t get quite as much sun, but still looks good. Typical PA weather. We got spoiled with early warm weather, hit with a late bit o’ winter.
Anyone spraying with Garden Tech Worry Free? I know its pyrethrin based, but wondering what everyones experiences were with it. What levels are you mixing at and how often are you applying?
