Archive for grow hops
Hop Bines Top Out
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Hop Bines Top Out
May 29th the Magnum hops reached the top of their rope (15 feet tall). The cascade and Nugget hop bines reached the top of their ropes May 21st (13 feet tall). I predicted by June 1st this would happen and apparently nailed that guess.
This is the second year for these hops. The first year is fun to watch how fast the hop bines grow, but that’s nothing compared to the second year. The first year a lot of the hop plants energy goes into establishing the root stock also known as the crown. By the second year, the crown is established and the sprouts come up earlier than if you planted hop rhizomes.
My hop sprouts survived a few frosts where tomatoes would have surely died. Hops are hardy once established. I lost a Mt. Hood hop plant I had planted in a container this spring. We had some 50 mph winds and it snapped them right off – the rhizome apparently couldn’t handle it – no more hop shoots / sprouts replaced them. They probably would have survived if I had them trained on a rope. They were about a foot long and I had not yet decided where to trellis them.
Overwinter Hop Plants
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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!
Hops
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Hops Have Reached the Top
Cascade Hops in July
Hops - Humulus Lupulus – in July (7/20/2009) status report. It has been a couple of weeks since my last growing hops post. All three hop plants have topped their ropes. The Magnum hops finally made it to the top – about 15 feet tall. The Cascade hops and Nugget hop bines have reached the top of their hop trellis rigging twice and I have looped them around hose hangers and pulled back slack to give them more vertical space for the hop vines to grow.
I have decided to let them top out and and leave it at that because the looped portion of the hops bines do not seem to be putting out lateral shoots (for hop flowers / hop cones) like the un-looped portion of the hop bines are. They still may produce side shoots, but that is one thing learned from this hop experiment so far. Next year I am leaning towards a spiral approach, the point being giving them as much vertical growth possible with a limited vertical space (Although many folks grow them even shorter). I am trying to maximize hop cone production with limited vertical resources (without freaking out my neighbors with hop skyscraper towers).
Who knows, I may come up with a commercial approach to maximized hops production that will be financially and labor-wise feasible. Presently I am simply looking to maximize hops production for myself and other homebrewers. To grow hops, I have held true to keeping it organic. They seem to be growing very nicely for first year hops started from hop rhizomes only 3 months ago.
The Magnum hops plant is currently 15 feet tall. The structure of this hop bine is smaller leaves, more compact – but denser foliage. The Cascade hops bine is at about 23 feet tall with the topped out bine now making it’s way back toward the ground. The Nugget hops bine is about 21 – 22 feet tall (with the length of the looped bine on the hose hanger – see previous posts). The Cascade hops lateral shoots are impressive at 3 to 4 feet in length. A couple of the side shoots have wrapped around the the lowering rope and are now spirally up that rope! The Nugget hop bines are starting to send out some impressive lateral hop shoots as well. Just hoping these lateral hops shoots will fill in with lots of hop cones. Time will tell.
Nugget Hops Thrive
Magnum Hops Have Peaked
The hops I am growing will be used for a relaxing hop tea, combined with other calming and relaxing herbs like chamomile, lavender, kava kava and others to make sleep aids and de-stress formulas. And of course the main function of the hops will be for making awesome beers and ales. Of the beer hops, I have 2 bittering hops (Nugget and Magnum) and the Cascade hops are for aroma hops in the beer/ale making process.
Cascade Hops
Posted by: | CommentsThe 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
Hop Bines Humulus Lupulus
Posted by: | CommentsHop bines – Humulus Lupulus (not hop vines) are taking off now. Growing at a rate of 3 to 6 inches a day. 7 days ago the Nugget hops were 7 feet tall – the Magnum hops were 5 feet tall and the Cascade hops were 6 feet tall.
Cascade Hop Bines Gaining Ground
1 week later Nugget hop bines are just over 10 feet, Magnum hop bines are 7 feet tall and the Cascade hop bines are 9 foot 6 inches. In 7 days the Nugget hops grew 3 feet (5 inches a day), Magnum hops grew 2 feet (over 3 inches a day) and the Cascade hops grew 3 foot six inches (6 inches a day)! This is the fun part of growing hops!
The vertical growth should continue at this pace or better and the bines should soon fill in with side shoots and hop cones! The hop flowers or hop cones are the end product we are after. Watching the hops bines grow is the fun part. I have not had to lower the bines yet (soon) as they reach the top of the rope/pulley of the hop rigging. I still need to get some hose hangers or similar contraption to loop the bines on to allow more vertical space for the hop bines to grow.
Magnum Hops are Slower to Start
I mentioned on an ealier post that I spotted a posting on an interesting concept, a upward spiral. I don’t know if the bines would need to be constantly trained or if they would follow the spiral. I imagine there is a magic number of the angle of the rope where the bines would wrap around the rope without daily training. Too slow of a rise and the bine would attempt to grow straight up. I will experiment with this concept next year.
This years pulley rigged ropes with a slight angle is doing great. No sense in messing with perfection. The Nugget bines are within 2 feet of reaching the top so I better start shopping for
hose racks.
Nugget Hop Bines in First Place
