My backyard hop situation

[Senormac]

I'm getting really excited about the upcoming hop season. This will be the third year for my Centennial, Chinook and Fuggles and the 6th year for my East Kent Golding. Time to weed out the beds.

 

[Leezer]

I'm in my third year too. My cascade did pretty well last year, still have yet to get a cone on my goldings. Had two feet of snow a couple weeks ago, today was 70 degrees! I know that kind of weather won't last but its got me looking forward to season three.

 

[Senormac]

Excellent Leezer !! My EKG were slow too, but once they got going ....WOW !! I've had some phenomenal crops.

Here is a shot from last year early on in the season. The wood pillars are 13 feet high. I ran some rope across the top and then twined up from each plant to the top. The thing is, the weight pulled the rope downward as the weight increased. I'm going to have to put some thought into that this year.

 

[Senormac]

The third one down is my EKG. They love the spot and get full sun all day, at least while the sun is shining. Here in Oregon it can be sunny one day and rainy and cloudy the next. I'll dig up some old pictures and give a little back story on how this ended up in the middle of the yard

 

[Leezer]

Thanks for posting the pictures, always nice to see other setup ideas. I'm not completely satisfied with my hops growing setup. I have them in my vegetable garden area and have tried using tall obelisk type structures which worked out okay. I kind of wish I had planted them in a different spot but hate to move and disturb them now. But, I'm rethinking how I have my whole garden area so we'll see.

 

[Senormac]

When I started out I planted the rhizomes in a planter space by the house with twine going up to a nail on the rafters, one for each plant. This side of the house (the back) faces south so lots of sun. I had 3 Willamette and one EKG. The problem was the Willamette would grow at super high speed, right up the twine and to the rain gutters and then start looping over and over in a big bunch while the EKG was barely a foot high. They got smothered and would never produce. I watched this for a couple years before I decided the EKG's needed to be moved to their own space.

 

[Senormac]

So about 6 years back I moved the EKG out to a spot free of interference and put an old wooden ladder over the top. This was to mark the spot, give them something to grow on as well as protect them from over enthusiastic lawn mowing. (the bamboo structure to the left is our Marion berry trellis. they were in their 2nd year in this picture. Nothing like thousands of fresh berries growing in your own backyard)

 

[Senormac]

Needless to say..... they loved their new home

 

[Senormac]

In one season, I harvested 1 1/2 grocery bags full of EKG !! That's a 6 gallon carboy in the top picture. Some of the cones were HUGE !!

 

[Senormac]

To dry them, I just spead them out over a large screen (1/4 inch mesh) nailed to some 2x4's that rested on my sawhorses and left them out in the sun all day. I would retrieve them in the evening so they wouldn't get the night dew on them (or an unexpected night rain) and then spread them out again the next day. They were perfectly dried in just a few days.

 

[Tommydee]

Sub'd. Have some rhizomes on preorder. Hoping to get some cones in the fall, but maybe not til the following year. Will deer eat these? If so I'll need to find a spot in the garden. I'll snap a shot, enjoying some february hammock time!

 

[Senormac]

Nice ! I've never heard of deer eating hops before, but then my yard is deer proof seeing as I live in the burbs

 

[Leezer]

I have lots of deer around and they did not bother my hops plants at all. Neither did the rabbits or woodchucks thankfully.

That was an awesome EKG harvest Senormac! I hope mine get to that point in the future. Love the ladder trellis too.

 

[Senormac]

After a couple seasons of ladder hops, I started visualizing something bigger and better. All the pics of hop farms I had seen showed straight tall hop bines so I came up with this plan. Two 10ft. 4x4 posts bolted to two 2x4 8 ft. boards for a total of 13 above ground growth

 

[Senormac]

Which is how I got Centennial, Chinook, EKG and Fuggles growing here.....

 

[Senormac]

And brings us back to 2017
It's all an amazing cycle

 

[antony]

Excited for my 3rd year plants as well. Cascade, Centennial, & Columbus, all grown under 7ft mostly due to HOA regulations. Last year I had great cones but a bout of powdery mildew due to the tight coils of bines and cramped space from multiple shoots. This year I plan to limit to 2-3 shoots per plant & and more wider spacing between the bines. 3rd year is the year.

 

[Stealthcruiser]

Nice ! I've never heard of deer eating hops before, but then my yard is deer proof seeing as I live in the burbs

Planted some Cascade here, came out one morning and the leaves were all gone off of a 4 inch sprout.

No deer or rabbits in my yard, it has a wall around it.

But we do have a local cat....

Think he may have chowed down on it in lieu of catnip.

 

[PapaBearJay]

Excited for my 3rd year plants as well. Cascade, Centennial, & Columbus, all grown under 7ft mostly due to HOA regulations. Last year I had great cones but a bout of powdery mildew due to the tight coils of bines and cramped space from multiple shoots. This year I plan to limit to 2-3 shoots per plant & and more wider spacing between the bines. 3rd year is the year.

Do you have pictures of powdery mildew on your plants?

 

[Senormac]

Powdery mildew on your hops ? That doesn't sound too good

 

[C38368]

Jealous of some of these setups!

I started with four plants (two Cascade, two Chinook) in pots four years ago. One Chinook never took; replaced it with a Willamette the following year. That one never took, either. Then something decided to dig up one of the Cascade crowns (seriously, neighborhood animals?) and it never recovered.

So now I have a Cascade and a Chinook, fours years old and still in pots. I'll plant them in the ground at our next home. In the meantime, they're cantankerous! The Chinook absolutely refuses to take a break for winter, and puts up shoots year-round. I can't keep them in summer sun all day, so they only get about 3-4 hours of direct sunlight, in the mornings, with shade or filtered light thereafter. Seems like they either sunburn, or grow so fast they forgot to make cones (I got zero last year).

I'll figure it out eventually. I hope.

 

[SHbrewing]

I need a backyard

 

[thaymond]

Excited for my 3rd year plants as well. Cascade, Centennial, & Columbus, all grown under 7ft mostly due to HOA regulations. Last year I had great cones but a bout of powdery mildew due to the tight coils of bines and cramped space from multiple shoots. This year I plan to limit to 2-3 shoots per plant & and more wider spacing between the bines. 3rd year is the year.

What does your short trellis set up look like? I have a 6 foot helical trellis on this thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=474201

I'd be interested to see the PM
infection and the tight coils your talking about. This will be year 4 with the short trellis, and have had no issued with disease as of yet.

 

[Calder]

Nice ! I've never heard of deer eating hops before, but then my yard is deer proof seeing as I live in the burbs

I too live in the Burbs, but have 3 deer that like grazing on the ground cover at the end of my yard.

I don't know what gets the shoots, but something likes grazing on the new shoots as they come up; I'm suspecting rabbits or deer. I now have a couple of feet of chicken wire around my plants. It is only the small shoots that they like, and not the mature stems.

 

[biochemedic]

Nice ! I've never heard of deer eating hops before, but then my yard is deer proof seeing as I live in the burbs

Yeah....that won't stop them...

Living just outside Pittsburgh proper, I hear deer behind the house every day taking the dogs out; not to mention trying to keep said dogs from eating the deer $h!T, and keeping the deer from eating my wife's magnolia tree! Tried to plant tulips last year...the bastards apparently love them, as they even dug up the bulbs! I finally understood why all my neighbors have daffodils (the deer apparently don't like those more pedestrian flowers!)

 

[Senormac]

Woo hoo !!! We had some sun !! So I went outside to play.....spot the hops. Can you see them ? They are just little baby nubbins of sprouts

 

[Senormac]

Woo Hoo !! We had some sunshine..... FINALLY !! and I had a chance to check up on my hops. The EKG (7th year) are getting ready to grow like crazy

 

[Senormac]

progress update:

all 4 varieties are doing well .

Fuggles - year 2

East Kent Golding - year 6 or 7

Chinook - year 2

Centennial - year 2

Whole setup - year 2

 

[CyrusM1983]

Well spring is commencing faster there than in MN, but 4 of my plants have popped out. And I'm in the process of adding a garden of 6 Chinook and 6 centennial. And perhaps 4-6 Alpharoma.

 

[Senormac]

From front to back..... Fuggles, EKG, Chinook and way back there Centennial

 

[HopGobbler]

Lookin good!

 

[Mainer]

Do any of you good hop-growing folk also have dogs? My wife has banned me from growing hops (and elderberries, but that's a different subject) because they're poisonous to dogs, and our 13-year-old GSP will scrounge anything he can.

 

[thaymond]

In my experience, both of my shelties ignored the plants and the flowers, even when they had open access to eat them.

 

[Senormac]

Do any of you good hop-growing folk also have dogs? My wife has banned me from growing hops (and elderberries, but that's a different subject) because they're poisonous to dogs, and our 13-year-old GSP will scrounge anything he can.

I never heard of dogs eating hops before. Hops don't have any fruit so I can't think what would attract a dog to eat them. I'm not a dog owner though.

 

[Mainer]

I never heard of dogs eating hops before. Hops don't have any fruit so I can't think what would attract a dog to eat them. I'm not a dog owner though.

Well, my dog is kind of a weirdo. He loves to snack on milkweed pods, blackberry leaves, clover, and ferns. I wouldn't put it past him to have a munch on some hop cones.

 

[paarman]

Definitely protect them from dogs. When ingested by dogs, they produce hypothermia-like symptoms... So make sure to keep them away, regardless if they're attracted to them or not!

 

[cram]

I have three dogs and hops growing all over the yard. My dogs will nibble on hop leaves, especially growing tips [emoji51] but have no interest in cones. Even when harvesting and they drop on the ground, the dogs let them be. And these are labs that eat anything. No guarantee that another's experience will be the same, but I don't give it a second thought. That said, I would never pour IPA wort dregs, for example, where the dogs can get at it.

 

[Senormac]

I hadn't had time to do much with my hops for over two weeks. The EKG's were on the move......

One bine actually crept all the way over to the Fuggles and had made a couple wraps upward.....

 

[Senormac]

Mature (3+ year old) hops plants grow incredibly fast. I leave em alone for a few days (except for watering) and am surprised how far they go. This runner had to be cut so I could keep my varieties straight. Having mixed varieties on the same ropes doesn't sound like a good idea.

Notice how thin this year 2 Fuggles is. The leaves are spaced around 6 inches apart as it goes up the twine. I don't worry about it, cuz I know they will come in thicker as the years pass.

 

[Senormac]

My EKG is well established, going on 6 or 7 years now (I think) and puts out lots of bines that can't find the rope. Since I already have 6 - 10 bines going up each rope, and the growth is thick, I will cut these new low growers off.

Occasionally, I'll find a nice long growth that I had missed before and decide to wrap it into the rest. I just take it and spiral wrap it up the twine. It really thickens out the growth and the yield will be excellent. Notice how the leaves are all wonky. That's nothing to worry about. They were used to "looking" at the sun in their previous position but will soon shift their leaves to finding the sun in their new upward growth positions.