community hop-yard going in in urban Detroit.

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AgingHopster

AgingHopster

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Here are some pics of our community hop-yard going up in urban Detroit.

We picked up 20 various one year old hops plants from Great Lakes Hops in Leeland MI. We're just about done with the trellis now. We totally redesigned the entire garden to accommodate the 16" high "L" shaped trellis which will give us about 80' of cable.

I'll continue to add pics all summer as the hops grow all the way up until we're drinking our harvest in the fall. Hope it's a good year!

7313-raised-beds-trellis-going.jpg

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That is awesome! Im gonna give growing a try in Chicago this year. Good luck.
 
mux said:
That is awesome! Im gonna give growing a try in Chicago this year. Good luck.
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Contact Great Lakes Hops. They ship anywhere in the US and pretty much all year around because they sell rooted crowns not just rhizomes like most hops plant suppliers. Also, their plants are certified clean and free from disease which is so common in rhizomes. I've been a gardener and an amateur horticulturist my whole life but this is my first year growing hops. From what I can tell after months of diligent research about hops cultivation, crowns are definitely the way to go and Great Lakes Hops is the best place to get them hands down. I've seen their facility, it's a 5 acre marvel of modern horticulture. I was there on a Saturday afternoon a couple weeks back. Long after everyone else had gone home for the weekend, I was honored to be given a personal two hour tour by the owner who built every nut and bolt of the place over the last 28 years. I highly recommend GLH for the two simplest yet most important reasons; great product, great customer service. It's obvious they have a passion for hops and their friendly, genuinely helpful and hospitable customer service is something you just don't get to often these days.
 
Envy. I wanted to do this in Milwaukee. It got shot down. Hate to admit to this but my mother took a property we own and "put up a parking lot."

Ug. Good luck.
 
Retrofit said:
Envy. I wanted to do this in Milwaukee. It got shot down. Hate to admit to this but my mother took a property we own and "put up a parking lot."

Ug. Good luck.
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"Don't it always seem to go that they don't know what they've got till it's gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" - Joni Mitchell
 
Much respect and love the local flavor.

Keep good records so the rest of us in the area can get a leg up on what does/does not work for our area.
 
AgingHopster said:
Contact Great Lakes Hops. They ship anywhere in the US and pretty much all year around because they sell rooted crowns not just rhizomes like most hops plant suppliers. Also, their plants are certified clean and free from disease which is so common in rhizomes. I've been a gardener and an amateur horticulturist my whole life but this is my first year growing hops. From what I can tell after months of diligent research about hops cultivation, crowns are definitely the way to go and Great Lakes Hops is the best place to get them hands down. I've seen their facility, it's a 5 acre marvel of modern horticulture. I was there on a Saturday afternoon a couple weeks back. Long after everyone else had gone home for the weekend, I was honored to be given a personal two hour tour by the owner who built every nut and bolt of the place over the last 28 years. I highly recommend GLH for the two simplest yet most important reasons; great product, great customer service. It's obvious they have a passion for hops and their friendly, genuinely helpful and hospitable customer service is something you just don't get to often these days.
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Took your advice and got three crowns. Perle, cascade, and magnum.

image-1701381889.jpg
 
Below: A screw-up brew that I will brew again. I missed my OG and has to add 2 lb.s of DME but all I had was amber so I went with it and wow!!! This is now an Amber Cream Ale and everyone including myself is in love with it!
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AgingHopster said:
"Don't it always seem to go that they don't know what they've got till it's gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" - Joni Mitchell
Click to expand...

OOOOh lalala! Not the exclamation, the back up singers!

I just wanted to say from experience that the composted cow manure & humus you have in the picture is amazing stuff! My hops literally bursted with new growth every time I side dressed with it last season. However, I highly recommend mixing it thoroughly, maybe 50/50, with a compost, vermiculite or anything that will break it up and keep the soil loose. It turns into clay when it dries and doesn't drain very well.

With my Fuggles from GLH this year I spotted a single root that went into one of these nutrient rich clay nuggets and came out the other side multiplied into several roots!

Cheers!
 
ForerunnerBrewer said:
OOOOh lalala! Not the exclamation, the back up singers!

I just wanted to say from experience that the composted cow manure & humus you have in the picture is amazing stuff! My hops literally bursted with new growth every time I side dressed with it last season. However, I highly recommend mixing it thoroughly, maybe 50/50, with a compost, vermiculite or anything that will break it up and keep the soil loose. It turns into clay when it dries and doesn't drain very well.

With my Fuggles from GLH this year I spotted a single root that went into one of these nutrient rich clay nuggets and came out the other side multiplied into several roots!

Cheers!
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That's good advise! The cheap Home Depot bagged products are usually mostly clay. I learned the hard way one year when I bought the same brand of what they labeled as "top soil" and the stuff was like river mud. Good stuff but I had to amend it with so much that it really wasn't worth the "savings". This humic and composted manure is, very simalr but a much better base to make your own mix with than the top soil.

My typical mix is usually something like 30% of bagged compost-humic 20% rice hulls or perlite and 50% sphagnum peat. I usually mix in lots of other stuff too like greensand, various guanos and dolomite lime, blood meal and bone meal and I am very generous with the worm castings. I find you just can't use too much worm castings.

More pics:
IMAG03541.jpg


More than overbuilt I suppose but those were the only pulleys I could find locally that would work with the plastic coated cable. They're rated for 800 lb each! BTW, It snowed yesterday, 2 weeks ago it was 84F! Gotta love MI weather.
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this would be a great idea for portland too... hrm... got me thinking!
 
A variation of O'Daniel's Foreign Extra Stout. Very, very nice. My new favorite stout.
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My son working on the brewery/nursery.
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Ian raking in some rice hulls.
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Hopster- Followed your advice and put an order in through Great Lakes Hops last month. I checked on my order only to learn that I ordered some crowns and some starters. Since pretty much everyone else seems to only sell rhizomes I'm a little confused about what the difference between a hop and starter is. Thought you might know?

Also, since you're in Detroit you might want to check out Detroit Farm and Garden for soil and compost in the future. They just opened and are probably a better local option than Home Depot, especially since you weren't hoppy with the quality of the Home Depot soil.
 
JPKDetroit said:
Hopster- Followed your advice and put an order in through Great Lakes Hops last month. I checked on my order only to learn that I ordered some crowns and some starters. Since pretty much everyone else seems to only sell rhizomes I'm a little confused about what the difference between a hop and starter is. Thought you might know?

Also, since you're in Detroit you might want to check out Detroit Farm and Garden for soil and compost in the future. They just opened and are probably a better local option than Home Depot, especially since you weren't hoppy with the quality of the Home Depot soil.
Click to expand...

Hi!

A rhizome is just a small piece of the root of an older plant that is now sprouting this years new growth. The rhizome is buried and a new plant grows, along with any parasitic fungi or other microbial life that was dormant in the roots from last year.

A crown is like a baby plant with both roots and above ground growth, usually cut from the above ground portion of it's healthy mother plant. Because you got yours from GLH, you can rest assured that your plants did not arrive with fungi and parasites, which you can never tell when buying rhizomes.
 
I can't believe how great that looks. I'm on the west side of the state and have a one year Chinook in that is only about three feet tall. Nice work!
 
AgingHopster I love the idea of using pulleys in the trellis design, that way you don't have to mess with ladders or some other way to get your bines down come harvest time. Genius! I may have to incorporate this into my home trellis since I was trying to figure out how I was going to get my bines down come harvest time. Keep the pictures coming.
 
I never got around to posting my first year plants this spring. They seem to be doing pretty well. Thought I'd share a few pics go take my mind off the Tigers and Lions Sunday performances.

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Wow, simply amazing! Would love to see some more pictures of it! You guys have done a wonderful job, Keep up the great work!
 

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