Hop Poles

Getting a idea on what i need to get to make sure the hops are happy.

Treated Poles? Good or will the chemical in the poles leach into the hop vines?

Distance between poles? LxW Dont want 2 differnt kinds getting tangled.

Any pics would be awsome.

Thanks

i'm considering PVC. cheap and expandable/collapsible. thought i'd use twine on it so it has more grip. it's also water resistant and reusable.

PVC is a interesting idea.
Wind would be my only concern and making sure it was "solid" enough.

If you put it in a coffee can of cement with a joint at the base of the coffee can it would be able to be taken apart fairly easy.

What would be a good distance from pole to pole? 5-8ft?

winstonofbeer said:

PVC is a interesting idea.
Wind would be my only concern and making sure it was "solid" enough.

If you put it in a coffee can of cement with a joint at the base of the coffee can it would be able to be taken apart fairly easy.

What would be a good distance from pole to pole? 5-8ft?

Click to expand...

My thoughts for the wind was going to be just simple nylon rope anchors staked for stability. Not a complex operation. Good for us people without our own home (apartment dwellers).

The easiest is to use an existing structure that is south facing to hang the grow lines off of. If you can't do that, you'll get into poles. Hops want to climb at LEAST 15 feet and PVC is really flimsy at those lengths.

FYI, white PVC is not UV stable and will become brittle. Depending on exposure, I've seen it become brittle enough to crack with your hand in as little as a couple of years. US Plastics recommends, "For UV resistance of PVC pipe and fittings, paint with a white water based latex paint." I've also heard that the gray PVC pipe, commonly used for electrical conduits is UV resistant. If you could find that in large enough diameters, that should work pretty well.

Personally, when I do my hop yard I'm planning on just cutting down a bunch of 20' tall scrub pines, delimbing and turning those into poles. I know they will rot, but they're plentiful, free and grow quickly here in Georgia. Also, when I auger the holes in the ground, I'm going to line with a piece of PVC pipe so that replacement will be as easy as pulling one out and sticking a new one in. I figure to be stable that I'll need to bury at least 4 feet of the poles in the ground.

I used treated 4x4's with a geobarrier wrapped around the pole section below grade and about 6 Inches into the concrete footing (3 foot buried in soil).

Choice of poles is usually based on what you can get cheap and how long you want it to last. Green treated (arsenic free) won't be a problem, but be careful of old telephone poles or anything coated in creosote.

Are you planning on a pole per plant and letting the bine climb up the pole or are the poles just there to hold the twine for the plant to go up? A foot separation between twine is enough to keep the plants from jumping over as long as the poles are tall enough. I would suspect the same if you are setting a pole per bine.

GVH_Dan said:

Choice of poles is usually based on what you can get cheap and how long you want it to last. Green treated (arsenic free) won't be a problem, but be careful of old telephone poles or anything coated in creosote.

Are you planning on a pole per plant and letting the bine climb up the pole or are the poles just there to hold the twine for the plant to go up? A foot separation between twine is enough to keep the plants from jumping over as long as the poles are tall enough. I would suspect the same if you are setting a pole per bine.

Click to expand...

I was going to do poles with wire or twine connected to the two poles.

Have the plant at one end of the pole and have it grow up one pole down the wire to the other pole.

Just didnt know how much distance from one pole to the other.
If i can get away with a 1 pole per hop plant, by space wise i could grow instead of 3-4 grow like 8.

There has to be plus's and minus's to each way?

Situation is everything as you have seen from the above posts. Maybe you could post a pic of your planned situation?

PAge 22 and 21 with pictures in the book
http://www.crannogales.com/hopsmanual.html

Has a picture of a tipi like single pole Like I am trying to visualize your set up or horizontal with two poles.

Spacing is determined by how willing you are to prune the errant emerging bines

Bobby_M said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-toVpT-uSs

Click to expand...

WOW!!!
I like your setup! It looks like your plants are no more than 2ft apart from each other.

1 question, In your video you said you got the top of the fence poles. Are you talking about chain link fence poles?

What kind of $$$$ do those run? Or is that something you can find at the scrapyard fairly cheap?

Guess that was 3 questions...Sorry.

Will try to get a pic of where i am looking to put my hops online tomorrow night. It wont be the best pic, Just got my camera phone.

Thanks again for everyones imput. Any other pics of other peoples setup would be awsome. I am looking forward to my weekend priceing stuff out and hopefully getting lucky on finding something fairly cheap but useable.

No problem. My plants are actually about 3' apart, it's deceiving in the video. Frankly, if you have the same variety next to each other, you can run then a foot apart because it doesn't matter if the side arms intertwine. If you've got a Warrior and a Saaz too close together, harvest is going to be problematic to say the least.

The (chainlink) fence poles are the top horizontal ones and are sold in 10'-6" lengths at HD/Lowes but you can slide one inside another for 20'. I think they run $9 a piece. If you're lucky, you can snag some old pipe when someone rips out their chainlink to replace with wood or vinyl fencing. That's where I got mine. The 20 year old stuff tends to have wall thickness of almost 1/8" which lasts forever and won't bend. You can also find it in 21' lengths.

Havent got to garden cleanup yet
What you see to the left on the fence is a blackberry bush that i plan to well....Its going to have a bad year.
The brown spots on the right, Well thats spent grain...Just been dumping it in the garden area where ever it lands.

Basicly i would like to lay fabric down in that area next to the shed and have the hops in containers in the ground. The soil isnt the best right there so i figured i would go to the store and get some good soil to throw in there to help make sure they get a good start.

If you have any ideas on what i can do with this area that could be helpfull, Please feel free to give me your imput.

By looking at the pic if you go from the corner of the shed to the lawn that is what i was going to put for a hop area.

Just hope i have enough room.......
If not plan B is to basicly use the entire back of the garden. Just didnt want to take away from the garden space to much and figure out weeding/rototilling

Right now all i have is a hallatour/tettnag rhizome spoken for right now.
I am looking for pearle and i want to get maggnum, ammarillo, and a plain tettnang.
So if anyone near washington has any of these and would be willing to split up a bit, I would be more than happy to pay shipping

I used 4x4 treated 16' lengths for my poles, I mounted them on Concrete piers with the metal yoke to secure the base of the pole. Then raised to vertical (nearly 17' at the top) with Eyelets at the top for securing lines and the top line (to hold the vertical climber rope between posts). 3 securing lines per end pole (2 on the sides and one on the ends) and 2 on the middle poles. The line connecting the tops goes through a loop at the top of the poles and then down to another eyelet on each pole to adjust top tenssion.

Worked great last year in 70-80 mph winds... well I did have one bine that broke it's climing rope.

Seemed to be high enough and the plants were 6' appart (same species) and 8'-12' appart between species. This will alow me to split the root and double the plants next year and still have 3' between plants and 6'+ between species.

There should be a picture on here somewhere of the set up if you dig into the pictures of hop garden posts.

Cheers

Bobby_M, Thanks for sharing this video. I like your idea for poles.

Bobby_M said:

The (chainlink) fence poles are the top horizontal ones and are sold in 10'-6" lengths at HD/Lowes but you can slide one inside another for 20'. I think they run $9 a piece. If you're lucky, you can snag some old pipe when someone rips out their chainlink to replace with wood or vinyl fencing. That's where I got mine. The 20 year old stuff tends to have wall thickness of almost 1/8" which lasts forever and won't bend. You can also find it in 21' lengths.

Click to expand...

Funny that you posted this. I can't view your video here at work, but your description sure sounded familiar

Here's a photo of my trellis from last year. I wasn't quite finished with the guy ropes. The poles actually have a 3 point guy support. I used two of the 10' poles with an eye bolt through the joint to hold them together. For the base, I cut a pole into 3' sections and drove a section into the ground to support each pole. At the top, I used an end cap with an eyelet that I used to attach the guy ropes. I used a larger eye bolt near the top to run the support rope between the two poles, and left enough length at the end of each support rope to be able to lower the bines for harvest. This was the first year, so I only got about 8' of growth. Expect a lot more this year. We had some pretty serious wind last season and the trellis was very stable. The best part is that at the end of the season, I removed the poles, stuck the end caps over the base poles, and there was no visible trace of the trellis. You're not going to easily get 20' of height with wood. Yes, I know I could have used trees (we have dozens of 100'+ firs and hemlocks), but there weren't any that were quite in the right spot to run a line between and still get sun...

I have 3 rhizomes on the way this year. I was thinking about using EdWort's idea and expanding. Use 2 tripods made of 1/2" or 3/4" EMT and running rope in between them like you did Bobby.

As for other people's thoughts on grey "electrician's pvc", I have seen that stuff get very pliable and even turn brown in a few weeks of Texas sun. I wouldn't recommend it

Has anyone built one of these? Curious to see a real photo. I am not to keen on the collar design.



Comments welcome!

If the collar were metal, it would probably be pretty functional. The system I used was just easier to build and it supported more plants spread further apart. In the video, I only had 4 climbers but I now know I can pack more in as long as they are the same variety.

I used 2 chain link fence top poles for each setup. I couldn't dig too far down so I added more support with a 1x6 that I bolted to the garden boxes I built. I put a eyebolt thru the top and ran a rope up thru it with a loop on the end. I ran my sisal rope to the loop. The PLAN was to be able to lower the bines down to harvest. Somebody forgot to tell the bines about the plan...they wrapped themselves around the top of the pole and the ropes etc. This actually wasn't a problem since my poles come apart so I just took them down to harvest.

Here is some links to my facebook album.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3166168&l=65bfa555fa&id=662220468

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3166149&l=ed1a781d87&id=662220468

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3747143&l=531a587035&id=662220468

I hope this gives ya some idea.

-Will

Bobby,

When was your video shot? Is this new for 2010, or did you use it for the 2009 crop. Curious what the bend was like with full growth.

JustMrWill said:

I used 2 chain link fence top poles for each setup. I couldn't dig too far down so I added more support with a 1x6 that I bolted to the garden boxes I built. I put a eyebolt thru the top and ran a rope up thru it with a loop on the end. I ran my sisal rope to the loop. The PLAN was to be able to lower the bines down to harvest. Somebody forgot to tell the bines about the plan...they wrapped themselves around the top of the pole and the ropes etc. This actually wasn't a problem since my poles come apart so I just took them down to harvest.

Here is some links to my facebook album.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3166168&l=65bfa555fa&id=662220468

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3166149&l=ed1a781d87&id=662220468

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3747143&l=531a587035&id=662220468

I hope this gives ya some idea.

-Will

Click to expand...

Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

awsome idea..... Thinking real close to getting the chain link poles.
Cheap and fairly easy to dump concrete into the ground to make it rock solid.

Got the pic of the area taken care off...Was a idiot an deleted it on accident one night.
So i hope i can get 5 kinds in that area.

Pearle or amerillo hard to find for rhizomes?

The poles you choose should depend upon what type of hop growing operation you are planning.

If you going [commercial] with a larger hopyard with intent on selling the hops or rhizomes - I would suggest using black locust as my 1st choice http://delicious.com/fattymattybrewing/black_locust and cedar as my second choice.

If your hop growing plans include a hobby- or personal-yard (say under 50? plants) I would use anything from tee-pee poles to galvanized metal fencing poles to fabricated wood! Here is how I did it with long boughs [14 feet] from around the yard. Here's how I started a small trial plot in 2006... http://www.fattymattybrewing.com/ingredients/displayimage.php?album=302&pos=1

Cheers

My hops grow in large pots and I live in military housing so my poles can't be permanent.

I have a fence that surrounds the area where my garbage cans go.

I wire 4x4x8' poles to it and then clamp on a 10' piece of electrical conduit with a screw in U type clamp. That gives me about 19' of pole which works out pretty good. Easy to remove in the fall too.

fattymattybrewing said:

The poles you choose should depend upon what type of hop growing operation you are planning.

If you going [commercial] with a larger hopyard with intent on selling the hops or rhizomes - I would suggest using black locust as my 1st choice http://delicious.com/fattymattybrewing/black_locust and cedar as my second choice.

If your hop growing plans include a hobby- or personal-yard (say under 50? plants) I would use anything from tee-pee poles to galvanized metal fencing poles to fabricated wood! Here is how I did it with long boughs [14 feet] from around the yard. Here's how I started a small trial plot in 2006... http://www.fattymattybrewing.com/ingredients/displayimage.php?album=302&pos=1

Cheers

Click to expand...

I am just doing this as part of extending my hobby into the garden.
Plus i am a tight wad so if i can grow my hops and dont have to buy any more the better.

Came to the idea, I am going to put black fabric down on the area to control weeds. Run a line from the sprinkler system to the hop area so i dont have to water them every day.

Just got to figure what i am putting on top of the fabric to keep it in place.
Dont want to do rock or bark...way to much of a pain to remove if it doesnt work out in this area or i choose to exspand.

nicadrick said:

Bobby,

When was your video shot? Is this new for 2010, or did you use it for the 2009 crop. Curious what the bend was like with full growth.

Click to expand...

Hmm, didn't see this earlier. That was in prep for last year's growing. There was really no bend in the poles at all because the main horizontal line was also guy-supports kind of like how a tight rope stays tight.

Thanks for the reply Bobby.

McKBrew said:

My hops grow in large pots and I live in military housing so my poles can't be permanent.

I have a fence that surrounds the area where my garbage cans go.

I wire 4x4x8' poles to it and then clamp on a 10' piece of electrical conduit with a screw in U type clamp. That gives me about 19' of pole which works out pretty good. Easy to remove in the fall too.

Click to expand...

Any close up pics of the transition from post to pole? I have a deck that is oh, 10 - 12 feet from the ground at the railing. As it faces south I thought I would like to use that area as a hop farm. I think your solution may be one I can adapt.

Don't have any close-ups and they are down for the season. Basically all I did was put about a foot of the pipe overlapped with the 4x4 and then used a couple of these (same diameter as the conduit) screwed into to wood with long wood screws.

All easily available at Home Depot, Lowes, etc....

McKBrew said:

Don't have any close-ups and they are down for the season. Basically all I did was put about a foot of the pipe overlapped with the 4x4 and then used a couple of these (same diameter as the conduit) screwed into to wood with long wood screws.

All easily available at Home Depot, Lowes, etc....

Click to expand...

I appreciate your time and talent. That is what I wanted to know.

nicadrick said:

Has anyone built one of these? Curious to see a real photo. I am not to keen on the collar design.

Comments welcome!

Click to expand...

I built this with 4x4s cemented into the ground. I used plastic 4x4 deck post covers to anchor into the ground so I could remove the whole system to restring if I wanted. With this setup you could use anything for the post because the hops get nowhere near the treated lumber. The arms are made from gas piping.

The lines come up from the ground and go down to an anchor which allows me to lower he whole bine to harvest. I can then let the bine continue to grow the rest of the season.

You see 8 different hops in their first year. Not shown is an automatic watering system on the ground.

The basic design comes from BYO Vol 15 No 2 (March April 2009).

-Scott

Beauty, McKBrew!

I like your setup. I can just get a couple concrete pier blocks to anchor the posts, and I'll still be able to move my pots and poles around as need be!

BTW, nice choice of beverage. Hop Stoopid is good stuff! Cheers!