Alternative Hop trellis'

[BlackJaqueJanaviac]

At the local children's zoo the Master Gardeners Club has a beautiful garden. They have tunnels made of concrete reinforcement panels bent into arches. Then they let hops cover these.

Is there any reason hops need to grow 15 feet high? Or would tunnels such as this work fine for good yields?

 

[Pappers_]

I've seen giant hop bushes that go up some, but go horizontally further.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

No reason you couldnt do arches. Someone i know has a giant wooden trellis archway over the entry to their driveway and it has two plants.

The issue your going to have, that he has is you need to plant the same variety. His two plants grow up from either side and turn into just a big jumbled mess at the top so you cant actually tell whats what. If your just doing it for decoration then you dont care, but if you want to brew with them knowing which is which might help

 

[Brewmech]

I built a 9' tall 8' wide pergola over my entry way and it has 4 plants growing on it right now. One is over the top and another is threatening.

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

You can grow them on about anything they can climb. Some guys here have been pretty creative about their low horizontal trellises, lines on pulleys they can keep lowering, and so on. There has also been a post here about somebody's grandfather's farm's long-ignored hop growing as a massive bush, ignored, with nothing to climb for decades. The bines will grow on commercial trellises to 18 or 22 feet. They have been known to grow to 30 feet or more if given a chance. I suspect the height has more to do about cost-effectively maximizing yield per acre. With 900 plants or so per acre, they can't spend too much time with each plant. Building 18 foot trellises is well known here. In Germany they may be 7 meters. A 30 foot trellis would be more cost - and risk! A concrete arch doesn't sound commercially viable, but if it works in your garden, go for it!

 

[DanH]

I built a 9' tall 8' wide pergola over my entry way and it has 4 plants growing on it right now. One is over the top and another is threatening.

Pic?

 

[mjs3]

we live in a rowhome in center city philly with absolutely no yard.. just a shared walkway.
i tied twine to a nail on our 3rd floor window frame and its been climbing like crazy.
the rhizome, Mt. Hood, was planted in a very low raised bed on concrete and has got to be less than a foot from the end of the twine at this point.
its a pretty hood setup, which i why i chose Mt. Hood, but its growing like crazy.
i water and add compost to the raised bed twice week and so far so good.

i also have a Magnum i planted in a small wooden basket lined with a trash bag.
i must say it loves to climb the gate on my window.
and it looks really healthy in person.
im sure within a month it will cover the window completely... hopefully