Fuggle Container Hops

Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 2:24 pm

Fuggle container hops reached almost 15 feet tall.

Fuggle Hops

This is my first Fuggle variety and my first container hop. (I lost a Mt. Hood container hop plant to 50 MPH winds) I have it in a 20 inch diameter, 16 inch deep pot. It appears to support vertical growth, we will see if it has enough volume to fill out and support abundant hop cones aka strobiles. I wanted to connect the pulley to the underside on my roof (18 feet) but my ladder was only 14 feet and I am afraid of heights. I was on the third rung of the ladder from the top and hanging on for dear life. So the best I could do was 15 feet into the corner trim.

Maybe next year I will get a taller ladder and go to the roof. I really want to see what the best height is for hops production. I am guessing it is at least 18 feet tall as that is what many commercial growers use. I have also read that some varieties produce more hop cones or strobiles if you keep the bines under 15 feet. Unfortunately, they didn’t mention which varieties.

I used a mixture of top soil, compost and composted manure. I am hoping this will supply the nutrition needed for one years growth. I mulched the top of the soil with grass clippings to retain moisture and keep the soil from baking. The soil may get some additional nutrition as the grass clippings break down. These are first year hops and are doing well. The wooden trellis next to the hops is my cucumbers. They are not doing nearly as good as the hops.

Living in Minnesota, I will have to protect the crown / root stock from our down to 30 below temps in the winter. I do not have an insulated garage or root cellar so I will have to insulate the container with leaves or bags of leaves. I will have to do some more research and see if I will be able to keep this plant in the same container or have to move it to a larger container or put it in the ground. I would think that because hop root stocks can grow to fifteen feet, that it would become root bound. I have heard of others that had their container hops roots come out the bottom of the container and into the ground.

Hop burrs are starting to form on the hop bines.

Hop Burrs On the Bines

Not certain if the spiney hop burrs will show in this pic on the post. They are pretty small and I will post a close up of the burrs when they are more abundant. I also wanted to show the lateral growth since the last post. These 3 are second year hops and should produce quite nicely. What I have read is they peak during the 3rd year so I am looking forward to next year to see how much better they will do.

The Cascades actually wrapped across the 2 ropes between them (used for lowering and raising the bines) and the Magnum hops and are intermingling a little. I will have to be sure to separate them during harvest. They are filling out quite nicely and I am expecting a lot more hop cones than last years 4 pounds.

That’s where things stand today – June 26, 2010. Hop on!

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Technorati Tags: container hops, fuggle hops, hop burrs, hop cones

Overwinter Hop Plants

Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

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Overwinter Protection for Nugget Hops

Overwinter Magnum Hop Plants

In cold climates it is important to overwinter hop plants / protect them from sub-zero temperatures. Hops do fairly well on their own but can be killed off if the ground is unprotected and hard freezes the ground. Snow will insulate the ground but occasionally the snow will be blown clear or animals may dig the snow away from the underground hop crowns (started as hop rhizomes).

Protect Cascade Hop Crowns

No sense taking any chances of losing your hop plants to the weather. All it takes is a layer of mulch – I used 6 inches of leaves and grass I bagged while mowing. This also helps in the Minnesota climate to keep the ground cold enough in the spring to prevent hop sprouts from sprouting too soon and then freeze. Generally they will send up new shoots if the first hop shoots freeze and die off but why waste the root stock energy.

When sub-freezing temperatures have past in the spring, You just clear the mulch and and the hop crown will send up shoots as the ground warms.

Unless you want the hops to spread in all directions, you will want to trim the hop rhizomes by digging down and cutting the lateral running rhizomes and pull them up. You can plant these in other areas if you wish or give or sell them to friends and fellow hop growers and homebrewers. I will be cutting the rhizomes about a one foot radius from the center of the crown (two foot diameter to contain the hop plants). They are self propagating and will travel in all directions from the crown.

One problem with not containing the spread of hops is they will soon mix with other nearby varieties and can be hard to distinguish variety and/or you will have 2 or more variety of hop bines growing together and makes harvesting and separating the different varieties of hop cones difficult if not impossible. My varieties are 5 to 6 feet apart so with a little effort, I can keep them separate. You need to know which hops are which for accurate beer and ale recipes. You especially do not want to mix bittering hops with aroma hops.

That’s it, just a layer of mulch – leaves, grass, hay, straw or compost to protect the hop crowns and the organic material will also leach into the ground as an organic fertilizer. Next years hop yield will be even better!

Hop Plants

Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

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Cascade Hop Plants

Nugget Hop Plants

Hop plants have hit the top of the ropes again – 12 feet, bines are looped 6 feet around hose hangers (Cascades and Nugget hop plants total 18 feet tall with the loop – Magnum bines are a little over 10 feet tall). I went to drop the hop bines another 6 feet and loop them around the hose hangers I mounted last week – Murphy (Murpy’s law – anything that can go wrong, will) reared his ugly friggen head. Turns out when I looped the ropes/bines, the non-dominant bine (trailing the dominant bine by 6 feet) did not make the loop. This caused the shorter bine to rejoin the rope at the top of the hose rack, making it difficult to loop the ropes and bines without getting them tangled when the shorter bines rejoin the top rope during there climb.

Magnum Hop Plants

While the taller bine on each rope (I have 2 bines per rope) is topped out, the shorter bine on the rope will not be joined with the rope at the top of the hose rack. Something learned from this setup – issues with more than one bine per rope. Not a show stopper but an inconvenience trying to accommodate both bines on each rope. It will still function in that I will not need a ladder to lower the hop vines at harvest time.

The hops plants (at least the Cascade and Nugget hops) grew 5 feet in the last week. The Magnum hops are a little over 10 feet tall at this point – grew about a foot or two. The Magnum has more and denser vegetation than the other two. It appears to be a tie again between the Cascade hops plant and the Nugget hop plant at 18 feet in length.

While all three hop plants are sending out lateral shoots, the Cascade side shoots are much longer – 18 inches to 2 feet in length. Should start seeing hop cones soon. Hopefully the bines will fill out much more than they are now.

I may have to modify the hop trellis next year to accommodate 1 bine per rope (mount more ropes) or come up with some new ideas. Anyway I am happy with the first year hops growth. Hoping for a decent harvest despite this being the first year. Growing hops next year from established hop rhizomes / root stock should faster yet!

Lateral Hop Shoots

I finally stripped the bottom of the bines of leaves and side shoots (lateral shoots). I did not strip the hop bines the recommended 4 feet from the ground. I went around 2 feet (can’t tell me a damn thing – always been a bit of a rebel). You can see this on the bottom of the Magnum hop bine picture. The purpose of removing the lower foliage is to allow airflow to prevent mildew (especially powdery mildew) and possibly deter some pests that may come from the ground – we’ll see.

There’s this weeks status on the hops plants. I am also running out of rope, maybe 5 feet left to lower the bines for a total length of 23 feet – nothing to complain about though, proud of these hop plants!

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Technorati Tags: Growing Hops, hop plants, hops, hops plants

Cascade Hops

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

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The Nugget bine and Cascade hops bines have reached the top of the ropes. The Cascade hops plant overtook the Nugget and is now the bine height leader by a foot over the Nugget hops. The Magnum bines are still only 8 or 9 feet tall. I lowered the Cascade and Nugget bines 6 feet to allow the hop bines to continue to climb.

Cascade Hop Bines Take the Lead

I mounted hose racks to the side of my garage to allow looping the hop bines off the ground and allow more vertical growth (see pictures). One thing I learned with this setup is the bines blow off of the hose racks in the wind we have had the last 2 days so I had to secure the rope to the hose hangers ( I used tie wraps/ zip ties – Next to duct tape, zip ties are best invention ever in my opinion.

I chose Cascade hops, Nugget hops and Magnum hops because they are disease resistant, high yielding and grow well in my climate (zone 4). Apparently the Magnum do not fair as well, they are behind the Nugget and Cascade hop plants by 6 – 7 feet (I still love them though). The season is not over, anything could happen yet. My experiment on how to grow hops with a pulley system seems to be working well so far.

The bines are sending out side shoots for hops and I can hardly wait. Because they are first year hops, I am not expecting much of a hop harvest this year, although they are exceeding my expectations from everything I have read on the subject and from my hop growing friends. I can’t wait till next year to see what they will do.

Nugget Hop Bines Give up the Lead

The soil innoculant I used “Alive Soil Activator” revived all of my wifes flowers (can’t be hurting my hops either). Like all flowers, they look great when you buy them but after a month or so the flowering fades. I used this unconventionally and just threw a couple of spoonfuls in a watering container, watered the plants and they all look 200% better! Even revived a plant I thought was dead – it is flowering like crazy now!

Anyway, there is my status report on how to grow hops (my version). There is a lot of good information on growing hops out there – find it, read it, absorb it and grow hops like crazy.

One of my Favorite Beers / Ales

First Year Hops

Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

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First year hops update. It has been 2 months since I planted the hop rhizomes. I figured it is time for an update (and a reason to visit the hop growing blog). When they were first growing, the Nugget and Magnum hops were significantly ahead of the Cascade hops (by about 50% in height). At the 2 month marker, the Nugget hops are 7 feet tall, the Magnum hops are 5 feet tall and the cascade hops passed the Magnum and is at 6 feet tall.

First Year Nugget Hops

The Nugget hops are the tallest hop bines at this point in time (2 months). The Nugget bines do receive just a little bit more direct sunlight so I don’t consider this a fair race to the top. I have 2 bines sharing this rope and they are perfectly spaced and growing as a double helix (as are the other 2 hop plants).

My neighbor says he thinks the hops are cool. I was a bit worried about using the white rope as it sticks out like a sore thumb against my brown garage. White was not my first choice in color, I was actually looking for green but white was all they had. I did not have time to shop around so white it is.

The only fertilizer I have used is a little bone meal and blood meal. I am staying organic all the way with these hops. I will soon use some compost tea (as soon as my compost nears completion).

So far I have not had an issue with deer or rabbits eating my hops bines. I believe a rabbit got one of my nugget bines but that was before I had selected the 2 best bines to grow and I clipped the rest of the hop shoots. Since then the bines have been left alone.

I am looking at buying / using a soil inoculant as the soil on the side of my garage has been neglected forever. My wife’s peonies, surrounded by rock mulch has not seen much organic matter. I had to dig up rock and plastic to make holes for the hop plants. Last fall I dug down a foot and 2 feet in diameter. I mixed in grass, leaves and wood ashes to supplement the soil. There wasn’t much black dirt or topsoil so I added some with the organic materials. The hop bines seem to be doing ok for first year hops. I am looking at some beneficial ground bacteria and mycelium (mushroom type fungus) which helps the roots – root stalk / crown absorb nutrients from the soil.