North Carolina Hop Garden

Finally getting around to posting pics of my hops setup. I'm near Fayetteville, NC and these are 2nd year hops. The 2 on the right are cascade and 2 on the left are centennial. They grew okay last year but nothing worth harvesting.

I really enjoy seeing pics of everyone's different trellis designs on here and I took a little bit from different designs and came up with what I have. The trellis is only about 11 or 12 ft tall, but with strings running diagonally like they are, that should give the plants at least 20 feet of string to climb before reaching the top.

I used 1/2" conduit pipe for the trellis. I think the longest sections were 10ft, with 3ft being underground, and then added the 4ft sections on top of those. It seems to hold up pretty well without any additional support right now. I drilled holes at the top corners so I can add some support lines down to the ground if I ever need to, but I don't think I'll need it.

I wanted it to be tall, but wanted to be able to still reach the top from a ladder, so when I heard of the idea of running the strings diagnal I thought that was the perfect solution.

The plants started off strong in March, but the nights have gotten cooler and I think they've slowed down a bit, and tonight there is a good chance of frost, with lows getting down to 33 or 32. Hopefully they'll be fine.

Look forward to hearing what you guys think. Happy growing.

Looks great, that is going to take a lot of training the bines to make sure they grow how you want, but I like the idea.

Maybe so, but even if I don't get to them daily, I can train them every few days. I'm always out in my yard messing around so it won't be an issue. I feel like once they're on a string, they should continue in that direction on their own until I need to train them to go up the other direction, so that would not be too bad.

Very cool. Cant wait to see the end of season pictures! I agree training is no biggie.

Planning to grow some next year, any updated pictures?

Do you see either variety growing better than the other?

Yep. The first 2 pictures were taken May 1 (1st is cascade, 2nd is centinnial). Next 3 picturs are of the cascades taken May 19th.

The cascades have been growing steady since April, but for some reason the centinnials have not grown more than an inch since the sprouting in late March and getting to the size they are in the 2nd picture. Haven't done anything different with them then the cascades, and it hasn't been overly hot or dry this season so don't know why they aren't taking off yet.

very cool. especially love the dog peeing in the one picture

bhughes said:

Yep. The first 2 pictures were taken May 1 (1st is cascade, 2nd is centinnial). Next 3 picturs are of the cascades taken May 19th.

The cascades have been growing steady since April, but for some reason the centinnials have not grown more than an inch since the sprouting in late March and getting to the size they are in the 2nd picture. Haven't done anything different with them then the cascades, and it hasn't been overly hot or dry this season so don't know why they aren't taking off yet.

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My centennial is the same. It was a little plant and grew into a bigger version of the same shaped plant. Looks healthy though but smaller than yours. I'm just going to hope it doesn't die when it's 110 in July.

badbrew said:

My centennial is the same. It was a little plant and grew into a bigger version of the same shaped plant. Looks healthy though but smaller than yours. I'm just going to hope it doesn't die when it's 110 in July.

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Same here on my Centennial vs Cascade.

I wonder if centennial prefers it to be the dead heat of summer before it takes off, or maybe they just don't do good here in NC.

Last year, the first year, the centennials only grew to about 6ft tall while the cascades had a couple of stalks about 10-12ft long.