New Hop Garden 2014 (pic heavy)

Last year, my HOA poo pooed on my hop plants, citing that in had a structure that exceeds the HOA requirement. So in problem solving my dilemma of a bine plant that can grow 30+feet, and an HOA that doesn't want structures visible from the street, I went to the HBT forums for advice.

I found a neat design that allowed for 20+ feet of growth, but limiting the height to 8 feet. I ran with it and came up with my design.

My raised beds are 4' x 4'. The height on the fence is 6'. Problem solving that issue of "viewable from the street" limited the total vertical height I could work with. So, with a circular saw, a design and several hundred feet of jute, I present the 2014 hop cage. It allows up to 8 bines growing in different directions (2 per line), and over 30 feet in diagonal growth.

Any advice, suggestions, knowledge is welcome on how to continually improve and provide the best yields for my new plants. This project was finished on Sunday, and I wanted to snap a few pics before the coming storms.





What do you think?

Wow! That looks awesome! I hope it fills in, it'll look like a jungle of hops! How many lines per plant?

Thats gonna look pretty sweet trained zig zag like that haha

Here's the growth so far.
Chinook

Zeus

Nugget

Cascade

And....hopgasm. Looks awesome.

I know people will disagree but I Miracle grow (never on the flowers or hops). I had a great yield with my first year plants.

Going to have to sub to this one. Having no HOA I can go as high as I want, but I don't want to have to fence off too much yard to keep our 4 dogs away from them.

OP, I'm just north of you in Crest Hill. I've only got 3 plants in my hop garden, but nothing as extravagant as this setup. It looks great! I'm gonna have to come check it out. You in the Joliet Brewers Guild?

rgauthier20420 said:

OP, I'm just north of you in Crest Hill. I've only got 3 plants in my hop garden, but nothing as extravagant as this setup. It looks great! I'm gonna have to come check it out. You in the Joliet Brewers Guild?

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Sounds great! Local brewers are good fun. Most people I get to share my brew with know it tastes good, but have difficulty appreciating the time and effort it takes to make it. I've been meaning to join JBG, but can't seem to find the time. What plants are you growing?

With the rain and the weather over the last few, most of my bines went from tiny to huge. Zeus grew at least a foot since yesterday.

Thats a cool setup. It will be interesting to see it all grown out on the zig zags.

thaymond said:

Sounds great! Local brewers are good fun. Most people I get to share my brew with know it tastes good, but have difficulty appreciating the time and effort it takes to make it. I've been meaning to join JBG, but can't seem to find the time. What plants are you growing?

With the rain and the weather over the last few, most of my bines went from tiny to huge. Zeus grew at least a foot since yesterday.

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It's a good group of guys I think. Next meeting is next Wed in Joliet. I've got a Nugget and US Golding crown and a large Cascade rhizome. All 3 were purchased or given to me by fellow brewers from CHBG.

I just trimmed back all of my US Golding last night and left about 6 shoots which I'm going to train. The Nugget has a number of smaller shoots and a couple large ones. I'm thinking I will wait and see what happens and what I'll train. The cascade is slower starter but it's got a few shoots coming out. I have to move this one, so it was like I planted it twice and that's what I think shocked it again.

I'm going to let the growth take hold for another week or so, especially on the Nugget plant before I do any trimming. I want good strong bines for this year. I added some labels so I don't forget who's who.






My wife really enjoys the fact that they'll be contained within the boxes. (at least for now.... Mwahahhaha). She been said today that if I wanted to try different varieties, all I have to do is just build a new box as an add on... Sounds like the green light to me!

Btw, the munchkins thought that adding their little potted flowers would help Zeus grow faster. We will see.

I also saw a root that I dug up from my old Willamette plant while making the boxes weeks ago was starting to grow some tendrils. I had some extra fence space along the back, so I buried it there. We will see what happens.

Amazing job! Can't wait to see updates!

I'm with Keith in looking forward to the updates.

Yep just check my two year plants and I've got 2 suffering from a extreme caterpillar problem. So lets just say it was a massacre followed by a chemical (neem oil) attack. But the others are 6 feet plus and going strong.

Here's the whole rig up after a couple of weeks. I just dug out and replanted my Cascade plant because of suspected root rot. I was right. Hopefully she's not a total loss this year.

Update: Nugget & Chinook leading g the pack. Zeus is starting to throw additional bines, we're up to 8. Poor Lil cascade, limping along without any growth. I pulled her up and saw some root rot. I'm hoping I don't lose this one. :-\ after 3 days though, the leaves don't look like they're losing nutrients or appear stressed, the tiny bines that I do have are slowly growing, probably 1/4 to 1/2 inch since Sunday. Well see and I'll keep updating.

And since I know Yall like some pictures....

Nugget


Zeus


Cascade


Chinook


Any advice for root stimulation? I'd like to give my 1st year plants a root boost if at all possible. What would you guys and gals recommend adding to help the first year plants get some crazy root growth going? I've read "fish emulsion" but I don't know what that is. Any suggestions?

Update: it's funny, I get frustrated when the plants seemingly don't grow a whole lot, then I look back to see the growth from past posts. I hope HBTers are enjoying the thread as much as I am maintaining it!

Without further adieu, the pictures...

The whole rig

Nugget

Zeus

Cascade

Chinook


Turns out, old bottles can be recycled for slow release watering.:-D

Update: Nugget plans on taking over the world. The leaves are bigger than my Palm on this plant. There are sidearms galore, and some are pushing 4'. Total growth so far is over 14'.


Zeus is climbing significantly for a first year crown. All bines are over 8' in growth. After touching the bines on this one, my hands smell like lupulin, which is pretty cool.


Cascade is finally starting to show more signs of life. She has some good side arm action happening now, and is about 6' in total growth. That's better than I anticipated, seeing that I was about to re-order in early May due to root rot.


Chinook is still leading the first year charge. Tons of side arms and what look like some of the cone nodes starting to form. At 12', I hope the growth still continues, as she's gaining about 4-6" per day. We've had a couple of days of rain, and today is supposed to be sunny all day, should be a good growth day.


I really like that way the rig works out. My only complaint is training bines that are towards the back of the rig, as I have to carefully step into the cube in order to help train them. I gave up on all the side arms on the Nugget plant. Where ever they grow and latch onto is their business, as long as it doesn't start strangling Zeus.

Very nice pics, they are looking very healthy. Great job

Two week update: things are getting bushy! Chinook lost 2 bine tips to weather, but have tons of burrs. There's one bine left and it's racing around the jute as fast as it possibly can.

Cascade has finally taken root and is growing quickly.

Zeus is growing like crazy. It is rivalling my nugget plant, whose still trying for world domination.

Nugget: raced to the top, and still growing. Most of the bines are over 25' in length. No sign of slowing either. No spurs, which is consistent with last year's harvest.

Here's the whole rig. I can't wait for harvest this year!

Awesome set up! Cant wait for more photos!


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love the design, very creative! harvesting early cones seems like it'd be quite difficult tho.

I have to problem solve for some changes for next year on unanticipated problems with harvest, training, and watering. More pics to come soon.

Update: July training has kinda gotten away from me. These buggers are growing like crazy, and bushing out with side arms. I'm having trouble getting into the boxes to train the back areas. I think I'm going to string the twine diagonally instead of horizontally. It will solve a few problems, but sacrifice some growth length. For my first year plants, probably not too much of a problem. Nugget however wants to keep growing, which is fine by me. I just keep winding it around itself. She doesn't mind. One bine is estimated over 30 feet, which is pretty awesome. Now she just needs to cone up, and provide me with a massive harvest. I'm super excited for that!

Nugget:




CTZ:




Cascade: Not bad for coming back from the dead.



Chinook:

In addition to the diagonal restring, I think I'm going to buy some cheap screen or mesh to help separate the boxes. I have CTZ and Nugget making sweet bine love with each other, CTZ and cascade touching each other like antagonizing siblings, and Chinook trying to sidearm it's way into cascades box. Maybe a open screen door mesh so that air can still circulate and sun can get to the leaves, but inhibit the bines and sidearms from encroaching on each other.

Looks fantastic!

Update: it's a huge mess. Which is fine, because it's going to end up in the same place anyway. :-D I have tons of burrs forming, and Chinook is the first with cones. Followed by (oddly enough) zombie cascade.

Chinook
View attachment 213089her enclosure
View attachment 213091cones
View attachment 213092a giant cone with leaves coming out of it. A sign of stress? Over watering? Being a hermaphrodite?
View attachment 213093 her man danglies. I hope she's sterile, but it would be cool to start growing some chizeus, cascanook, chinugget...

Cascade
View attachment 213094returning from the dead.
View attachment 213095some Itty bitty cones

Zeus
View attachment 213096
View attachment 213097lots of little cones forming

Nugget
superbeast
these all showed up in the last day or two.

A few more from this morning. I am going on a week long vacation this week. I'm hoping that all those burrs explode into cones this week with the mid 80 degree weather and copious amounts of sun.

Well done thaymond!


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Your first year plants look amazing! Great job! My 3 plants are absolutely pathetic compared to yours.

You should put a hammock in the middle and make a beer tent

That is awesome. Let me know about those chinuggets...lol

That Nugget is a monster!

Thanks, all! A hammock would be a sweet addition to it, but would probably make things very itchy.

The first 7 or so pictures only show in my browser as links and they don't work. I'll repost those.

Chinook
enclosure
cones
weird funky cone
male parts

Cascade



Zeus

FourSeasonAngler said:

Your first year plants look amazing! Great job! My 3 plants are absolutely pathetic compared to yours.

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What are you using as a fertilizer? I planted mine in a bed of mushroom compost, manure, and topsoil in equal parts. 2 week fertilizer schedule from April to June with a 10-1 slurry of blood meal, and a weekly dose of 10-10-10.

For next year, I'll lay down a bed of the same for it to grow through, and probably keep the same schedule because it works for me.

2drunk2 said:

That is awesome. Let me know about those chinuggets...lol

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I hope it's sterile parts, but I guess time will tell. I'm not going out of my way to try and fertilize my cones. I'll have to look up if any of the varieties are diploid, triploid, or tetraploids. If I start seeing seeds I'll drop a line to the breeding thread.

sumbrewindude said:

That Nugget is a monster!

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It started to encroach into Zeuses enclosure, and I said out loud "I'm not even mad, I'm impressed..." in my best Ron Burgundy impression. As far as I can see one of my Nugget bines is more than 40 feet in growth (it makes a total of 9 turns around the cage, plus the 2 feet from the ground and the little extra after the last turn. Well see how big this crown is next year.

I may be cutting rhizomes in the spring to help limit the amount of bines next year.

thaymond said:

What are you using as a fertilizer? I planted mine in a bed of mushroom compost, manure, and topsoil in equal parts. 2 week fertilizer schedule from April to June with a 10-1 slurry of blood meal, and a weekly dose of 10-10-10.

For next year, I'll lay down a bed of the same for it to grow through, and probably keep the same schedule because it works for me.

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I put my first year rhizomes in containers with a mix of equal parts compost, topsoil, and potting soil. I fertilize every 20 days with Miracle Grow 28-8-16 All purpose plant food, so I expected some serious greenery.

I had battled spider mites on my Tettnanger bines which ended up getting stripped of all leaves and growing back from nothing. That bine is 6 weeks old and about 12" tall.

The other two varietals have just been slow growing and tough to manage watering. Just a bit too much and they yellow up, miss a gallon one day and the plant loses half it's leaves.

I really need to get them in the ground but I have no place to put them.

Update: Never ever ever ever use tomato jute as a line. When I bought the stuff, it was sturdy and felt like it could hold the weight of the bines. I bought 800' of it.

Well, it's biodegradable. Which means that as these guys got to their heaviest with cones, the lines would start snapping. Entire sections would fall onto others. It was a mess.

I fixed what I could and learned from the mistake. I think ill use some nylon or reinforced wire for next year to avoid this. Every day, I have to go out and patch a section with some aluminum wire to hold up a heavy bine.








The good news is that many of the cones are reaching maturity and need to be harvested in the next week or two. At least I get to put the new oast through its paces!

Wow!
Those plants look awesome! and those are first year???
I have a bunch of plants going and none of them look this good. I have them running up a hemp rope which is strong enough but I'm not getting a lot of cone growth, maybe I cut them back early or late...
My current set up isn't going to work much longer and I need to start thinking about what I will do next year. I like your idea, might have to do something similar but maybe keep the same types in groups so they don't grow into each other.

rekoob said:

I like your idea, might have to do something similar but maybe keep the same types in groups so they don't grow into each other.

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That's my dilemma this year is how to make it so: A - the plants don't encroach on each other, and B - make it so I can access the back and sides of the inner cages. I placed them close together, and I should have spaced them out 2x2...left enough lawnmower space between Zeus and cascade.

All are 1st year except Nugget. Nugget is 3rd year, but first year in the ground.