...But the other question is if you are selling to a distibutor would there be any that would want hops from Florida as they may be seen as a gamble as it is not the best place to grow hops - GVH any comment?
On a first year growth I'd probably got close to a pound per plant but I'll also hand picked the cones and let the plant continue to grow instead of taking the whole vine...gotten more from my plants if I would of stayed with my fertilizing schedule, which I gave up on when I had more than I needed...
I get this type of question/comment all the time. "I live in Florida/Texas/Arizona/etc and my hops grow just fine. Why does everyone say you can't grow them below 34 degrees?"
You can grow them. The vegetative part will grow quite well and shoot to the top of anything they can grab onto. The problem lies in the production you are able to achieve.
Dusk2dusk, I hate to break it to you but I'm quite certain you did not get 1 lb of hops dried down to a proper moisture content. Or if you did, you won't repeat that next year. Most likely, like most 1st year growers, you didn't dry them down far enough. Make sure you keep drying until they are almost 1/5th the original weight.
The problem with growing in the deep south (or in Alaska) is that the plants use temperature and day length as indicators to tell them when to flower. In the typical hop growing latitudes the bine will emerge in the March time frame, it will grow until June 21st and then as the days start shortening, it will focus on sidearm production and developing burrs/cones. If you are in a warm climate, the bines will pop out of the ground earlier, grow faster and start entering the burr stage in late may/early june. This will be before side arms start to really pop out. Without those side arms, you don't have enough plant surface to generate the big production numbers (2 lb/plant).
What happened to you this year is you planted the rhizome at the optimal time, so it grew normal. Next year, it will be popping up really early.
There is hope. Starting with the 3rd year, the plant will have a large enough root mass that you can cut the first, second, maybe even third flush of shoots. This will delay the start and may get you on the "normal" schedule for the plants. Of course, everytime you cut, the plant has put a bunch of energy into developing those shoots and you just cut them off.
Finally, harvest labor will get intensive. Figure 45 minutes/bine to harvest regardless of how many cones are on the bine. Do the math and you can see that if you have to hire people, you will be paying a lot just to get your product in.
If I were you, set aside the "supplementing your income" idea for the moment. You are behind the 8 ball on that unless you have a lot of $$'s and time to invest. Find a local brew club and work out a deal where you grow and they show up to help with harvest and kick in some funds/beer/other compensation for you. You'll get a new group of fun people to hang out with, they'll get fresh hops for wet hop brews and dry hopping and you'll get experience. As you learn, you may discover you can go commercial. By that time, I guarantee that one of those guys you've been hanging with will be opening a brewpub or working for one. That will be your instant in with a customer that all ready knows you and trusts you. That's the hardest part of the sale.
If I haven't convinced you to re-think this whole thing, take a look at the document we just produced for the USDA. Its called the
Best Practices Guide for Hop Processing and its free for download. 102 pages of what it takes to process and sell hops...this isn't about production, harvest, etc. Just what you need to do once the hop leaves the dryer.
