Michigan hops harvest 2009

Ok, it's time to do a partial harvest. I've got 7 plants: 6 Casascades (1st year) and 1 Cenntenial (2nd year, but moved this year to a new location). Four of the cascades are ready to harvest, they are crunchy when you squeeze them, and getting brown at the tips. The rest are not there yet, will do those latter.


This is my hop garden:

As you can see it's a big mess. Unfortunately for some reason I had a genius idea in the spring to plant tomato and jalapeno plants in-between the hops, so now it's all big tangled jungle over there. On top of that, the rope of the biggest plant broke last week during a storm and now it lays on top of the others.


Here is my youngest kid helping his daddy with the hops. I bet I'm braking some child labor laws. My kid needs a lawyer!


Drying:

I'm gonna move them to the garage later, but for now it's so sunny and hot out there on the deck, this is working well right now.

I got 1 lb. 14 oz. wet cones out of that, (3/4 of a bucket) so probably about 6 oz. dry? Will see. Oh yeah, it took me 3 hours to do this! Jeez, that's some hard work, man.

Nice harvest! Maybe it was your kid that made it look so good....nah, nice hops man!

I've never dried my hops in the sun because I've heard that it will skunk them. I haven't even harvested in the direct sun so far. Maybe someone here will chime in.