Going to start growing hops

Hello all those knowledgeable in the field of hops (terrible pun intended),

I have reached the point in my adventures in home brewing and would like to start growing hops. I live in south central SD, with sandy soil, and we happen to have a farm, so space is not an issue. Also, we had some old utility poles take out a few years ago and the city never picked them up. Well that is the back story, now for the questions.

Are hops grow-able in the sand hills?
How can i utilize these poles to make a hop trellis?

My brother and I will, hopefully, figure out what kind(s) of hops we want to grow soon, at least before the spring.

Thanks in advance for any input,
Chip

How tall are the poles? And how many do you have? If you only have a few, I've always been a fan of standing them up about 25' high and extending lines out from the top of the pole in a circular pattern.

We guess they would be 20-25 feet out of the ground. Also, we have 2 poles.

I would run some stiff wire, like clothesline wire, over the two poles, with some way to let it down for tying on the string and harvesting. The space between would be dependant on how tight you can get the line and how many plants you plan on putting up.
As far as the sandy soils go, I would think you would have to be pretty vigilant on watering. I am in Manitoba, with heavier clay soils, and the wettest year we have had in a LONG time, and there were still days that I had to give them extra water.
Figure out what varieties you want and keep a close eye out around April, when the rhizomes are being put up for sale, and act quick when you see them, the sell out very fast.

Good Luck.

here is a great source of info for you that explains the basics of hop growing from a production standpoint: http://www.crannogales.com/HopsManual.pdf

the sandy soil you have can create problems due to leaching of nutrients but that problem is easier to fix than the alternative of heavy clay soils. just make sure you amend the sand with a bunch of organic matter to help hold nutrients and make sure you topdress each year with a good shot of manure/compost etc. to replenish any that have leached over the course of the growing season. good luck and have fun!

That manual is a pretty good resource.

Question: do you have the ability to reach the top of the 20 ft pole? (you will be burying like 5-10 feet of it for stability). Is it a ladder? A bucket truck? That could make a diff. on your trellis design.

With two poles, I can think of two options.
1) what SuthrnComfort said; use the pole as a center pole and have your twine coming off of it in a circle. Attach those to the ground about 7 ft away from the center pole. Its like making a teepee. (pg. 22 on that pdf, just use more twines off the pole)
This method is nice because it is compact and you can have your two "teepee's" in two diff. areas if needed. And you could dedicate each teepee to a hop variety (I would only use one variety per teepee, or maybe two, with one on ea. side)

2) Or you can have the two poles as a support for a long wire going between them, like on the top of pg. 23 in the pdf.
This method is more like how the pro's do it, but if you don't have the ability to get to the top of the wire to remove the hops for harvesting I wouldn't choose this method.

With the first option, you could just lean an extension ladder up ea. pole at harvest time and easily remove ea. set of bines.

Remember, you will have to get the bines back down at some point in time!

Thanks for all the answers.

We are kinda leaning towards doing the teepee style trellis right now. As for reaching the top we have either a couple of ladders, including an extension ladder, or the bucket of a tractor that we can stand in. For us, getting to the top won't be much of a problem.

I am curious as to how most of you guys harvest. Do you cut the vines off and harvest, or do you pick the individual hops and let the vines keep going? I think this might play a role in our design of the trellis we make.

back in the early 90's, a gas well was installed at the farm i was working at. the contractor left a bunch of 40 foot lengths of 2 inch pipe behind. i ended up cutting them into 8 foot lengths and drove them about 4 feet into the ground. found some tall, thin straight trees growing along the woods and strapped them to the pipe. the hops are growing about 2 feet away from each pipe. hops are trained to climb up the pole above where it is strapped to the pipe. at harvest, the poles are unlashed from the pipe, laid down and picked. after picking, they are reattached to the pipes and allowed to continue growth until they die back. i was never really big on the whole trellis system and especially now that my arial acrobatic abilities are beginning to diminish as age continues to creep up! i know everyone doesn't have the resources mentioned, but it works for me. have at it.

One method i have been toying with in my head is to have some sort of pulley system on top of the poles that is attached to the top of the twine so i could raise and lower the hops for picking. I am not sure how effective this system could be, though.

B-Hoppy: I don't think I get what you are saying. Did you cut down the thin trees to make extensions for the poles? Or are the pipes attached to the trees by a wire/twine? What is the total height of your bines?

From experience, you get the most yield if you allow for vertical growth, once you force the hops to go horizontal, they produce less cones at that point.

You live in SD, so I don't know how early the first frost is, so you will probably be sufficient in doing an "all-at-once" harvest, cutting down the bines and picking the cones at the same time.

I live in the hot and dirty south, so I get 2-3 harvests every year; one in august, one in october, then sometimes one in december!! That's our long-ass growing season! So, I pick the cones off the bines and never cut down the bines until it is "cold" outside (read in the 50 F during the day, which is like late Dec./early Jan)

I use camping/cheap carabiners to attach my twine to the top. At harvest you just unhook the carabiners and drop the bines to the ground.

I have zero experience here so disregard if this is way off.

Seems to me you could put heavy duty pulleys at the top of each pole and use cranks (like the ones on boat trailors) to lower the trellis at harvest.

Could this work?

Chip and I had the same idea it looks like

Dixon, that is what i was kinda thinking, something similar to that.

funkswing, One of the state universities has a ton of info on frost dates, i think here we might be able to squeeze 2 harvests in, just depending on the year. So, i guess right now i am looking for a system where I can get multiple harvests off of each vine

chip82 said:

One method i have been toying with in my head is to have some sort of pulley system on top of the poles that is attached to the top of the twine so i could raise and lower the hops for picking. I am not sure how effective this system could be, though.

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That is what I was talking about, and how I do it. The pulleys allow you to raise and lower the wire right to the ground for stringing and harvesting.

funkswing said:

B-Hoppy: I don't think I get what you are saying. Did you cut down the thin trees to make extensions for the poles? Or are the pipes attached to the trees by a wire/twine? What is the total height of your bines?

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funkswing,

the trees(poles) are cut and strapped to the pipe that's been pounded into the ground as a support. the 18 - 20ft. poles can be taken down at harvest and then put back up after harvest to allow the plants to send carbohydrates back down to the crown for a few more months until they die back to the ground. no wires, cables, hardware etc.. only drawback is that the trees/poles have to be replaced about every 3 years. plenty of woods around for that though.

I think I missed some of the conversation as to how many bines are being supported and the trellis configuration... I use a pulley system, one pulley per rope and 3 bines per rope. No need for a crank device unless you are raising and lowering multiple ropes/hop bines at a time.

B-hopppy - makes sense. I like it. It must be fun holding that 20 ft pole with all them bines on it when you first take it down!

It seems that if you used pulleys on a teepee-style trellis that you would be limited to like 4-5 pulleys total on the pole. If you have a way to get to the top of pole easily (like the OP does), I would just attach the twine to the top of pole with some smaller hardware, like an eye-loop and carabiner.
This way you can have the maximum amount of bines going up the pole. Then you could have peace ceremonies inside your dense hop teepee!

growing hops - the conversation hasn't gotten into how many bines or rope per pole, but my brother and i were thinking either 6 or 8 ropes per pole.

funkswing - easy is definitely what we are going for

something we were discussing last night is to have some sort of device we could raise and lower all of the ropes at once, but also be able to remove individual easily if we needed too.

something we were discussing last night is to have some sort of device we could raise and lower all of the ropes at once, but also be able to remove individual easily if we needed too

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That would be awesome. Would take some planning to figure it out, but once you had it up (assuming it could handle the SD winters) it would be convenient.

I think you could easily get 8 ropes up one pole. The only concern is the density of hops at the top of the pole (where they all converge). It will be a tangled mess. So being able to lower all the ropes at the same time might be a must b/c the separate bines might be all intertwined with ea. other.

Just a thought i had, but what if we had something to prevent the bines from getting into the rising and lowering rigging by attaching something on top similar to what they put on dogs to prevent them from biting themselves. A cone kind of device to shield the rigging.

Lol, I got a funny image in my head from that post. Its worth a try, but those hops don't give a damn about whats in their way. They will grow, and grow they do.

Do you think that you could train the bines to start growing back down the rope, or will they naturally want to keep growing up?

No. You can't even really train them to grow horizontally. The hops want to grow-up. Don't be trying to growth them "topsie-turvie" style like tomatoes!

If you have a 20 ft pole you don't need to worry about this. The hop cones grow on the side arms that are produced after the initial shoot-up in the beginning of growing season. There is still vertical growth, but the side arms are where the magic is. This is why it will be a tangly mess at the top of the teepee pole, the side arms growing in each other.

But since you will more than likely be harvesting all at once b/c of your shorter growing season up there (SD, right?), you just bring them down all at once and start picking them when they are on the ground.

What i meant by training them to grow downwards, is when they get to the top, take the bines and wrap them to start growing back down the rope when they are reached the top.

Yeah, I don't think they will do that.