Search results

Getting close to the solstice, so its about time for an update. The growth has really suffered due to our very mild / cloudy spring months, but as June has started pushing more heat (and longer daylight hours) were starting to get there quickly. As you can see, I am playing with a trellis...

First picture is likely a calcium deficiency. Second picture is a magnesium deficiency. (Calcium and magnesium deficiencies tend to show up in pairs) Toss some epsom salt in your sprayer and hit them every couple days till they green up. Third picture looks like a series of plants that are a...

The Willow Creek is in its second year though the Neomex hops produced like 3rd year plants in their 1st year for me - 7 gallon freezer bags of cones per plant. My 3rd year plants (Cascade / Columbus / Newport) all produced about 3.5-4 gallon freezer bags in their 2nd year, 1.5-2 in their 1st...

^ This. The plant more or less uses its runners to determine day length as the roots don't know what time of year it is. If they see daylight under 13.5-14 hours, they tend to go into flowering mode. But now you've opened a can of worms PapaBear! :D I think the diminished yield for the season...

The multihead is similar to cascade in its fruityness, though more tropical fruit than citrus-grapefruit and has a melon-peachy? finish. My multiheads were my highest producing plant last year, something like 7 gallon freezer bags full of hops on a first year plant. (My second year plants were 4)

They're bright and very lemony - pure citrus. The neomex varieties (I also have multihead) also produced more than my second year hops on their first year. They also are the first to get big of the varieties I have - currently about 10 feet tall. This may be that they like sub irrigation / my...

The early developing shoots look very healthy and show no signs of disease or nutrient stress, but its definitely time to start cutting the plants back! Problem is, on my 3rd year plants (and 2nd year willow creek) I can't seem to tell the difference between a bull shoot and a regular shoot...

It took till about mid-December for the daylight hours to get short enough, but all of the hops eventually died back to their crowns. The gin and beers produced with the hops from the yard have been a great way to pass the fall/winter months. Toward the end of February, I cut off all of the...

Provided the light isn't right on top of the bines, you'll be fine. My neomex hops are lit every night by a couple LED floods that hang off my house. The plants are probably 15 feet from the lights and I had no yield issues. My Willow Creek was more sensitive to the LEDs than my Multiheads and...

All of the "traditional" hops were cut back to stumps right around the beginning of October. Since then, most of the hops have started to bud / shoot. The Cascade and Newport hops are climbing back up the lines. Newport is already at the top of the fence, shooting toward the roof (roughly 5 feet...

Multihead is tropically fruity, maybe peach-passion fruit? Its MUCH closer in its floral notes to Cascade. The Willow Creek is an ultra citric, bright lemon flavor / aroma, nothing like a Cascade. I'll probably add a bit of soil mix when I do some minor top level tilling, but otherwise, I...

Im in southern California and I let the plants die on the vines at the end of the year. Each line dies back at a different time - usually based on the ripening time of the plant. When the remains of the plant look sufficiently ugly, I cut them back to the ground. Over winter, rainfall and...

Thanks Thaymond. Yeah hops work for lots of food based uses - sun tea, steak seasoning, alcohol infusions, "live hopped" beers, etc. The more I treat hops like pepper, oregano, or any other spice the better they seem to work. Harvested the Southern Cross (.5 freezer bag) and AlphAromas (1.5...

Well theres a couple things going on in those shots: 1) The veins are green but the leaf centers are fading to yellow, so thats a magnesium deficiency. 2) The tips of the leaves are starting to yellow, coupled with spotting through the leaves, looking a bit like the start of a calcium...

Grab a bottle of gin, (I used Sapphire) toss the hops in and wait a week or two. The gin will dissolve and absorb the lupulin, flavoring the gin to match the hops used. You'll know you're getting close when the gin takes on a yellow color from the lupulin. I used Columbus, Multihead, Southern...

AlphAroma - cones are starting to paper up, should be harvested in the next week or two. Santiam - harvested, got about 3/4 of a freezer bags worth of cones. The "fruit stripe gum" I am not picking up as much as I expected (per GLH's description) but it does have a nice citric floral smell...

Harvested my Willow Creek (NeoMex) hops.. My second year plants are filling 2-2.5 freezer bags and my first year plants fill 1-1.5 freezer bags. The Willow Creek filled 7. Unreal output for a first year plant!

Those are mites, they are not aphids. DMTaylor is correct - mites make webs. You should be able to brew with them without issue. I wouldn't worry about the few mites on the cones. The heat of brewing or the cold of freezer storage will definitely kill them. Any hops covered in webbing...

From my SD Hop Garden thread:

Vernalization hasn't been an issue here in San Diego. I don't think we ever see temps below 38F - and all of my second year plants grew normally with typical maturation rates and output. That said, my plants don't really take off till about June either. It seems like our hop season just starts...