Anyone thinking of planting hops in thier local community garden?

I have a small community garden plot in addition to a very small mostly shaded back yard. I usually use my community garden plot to plant vegitables that like full sun, and have had excellent results. I am thinking of planting my hops in the community garden this year as it is the only place that gets full sun, but the extra tall plants might cause my community neighbors to dislike me, after all planting tall plants will steal the sun from their plants.

Is anyone here a member of a community garden? What are your opinions on people who grow tall plants (beans corn etc)? Do you think I need to worry about the "wind" blowing over any setup I make for my hop vines? I only ask because it is going to be a lot of work to put them in, and I would hate to have to take them out if someone complains.

lol... you're only going to steal the sun for a maximum of 1/2 the day. There's more than enough sunlight to go around.

I was thinking about setting up a couple plants this year but I dont have any place to put them. There is a couple local parks that are for the most part empty all year round... It probably wouldn't kill me to at least TRY to put some up in there and see what happens. Worst case is someone kills them.

I just dunno that I would want to have these plants in a plot that is very far away. Left alone these thing grow like weeds and that may "irritate" someone. I prefer to keep them at the house where I can easily inspect them on a daily basis.

Once I had an infestation of caterpillers, about three per plant. They ate half of the plant overnight.

I live in an apartment complex with lots of mexicans with weedwackers. I dont think a 15ft tall plant would last a week. Hops made it this long... with caterpillers around.

It'd be best to plant them next to a wall or a fence and run a cable up that for the hops to climb. Hop bines can easily grow 20' to 30' in a season. Hops don't really get bushy, they tend to want to climb straight up, so they won't be 'stealing' much sunlight, especially with first year growths. After that, you trim back all but 5 bines and let them climb the cables. They also get an extensive root system, but it mostly goes straight down. The root ball can take up about 18" diameter around, and grow several feet deep.

sirsloop said:

I live in an apartment complex with lots of mexicans with weedwackers. I dont think a 15ft tall plant would last a week. Hops made it this long... with caterpillers around.

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Lol! I feel your pain

I too have thought about tempting to grow hops this spring. Any input about best time of year to plant and what type grows best in ol..I dunno...say southern OHIO. I don't wanna spend a bunch of time researching. Just wanna throw them in, give them a rack to climb and see what happens.