kilohertz
Well-Known Member
It's been a busy few weeks and we have expanded the hop yard significantly.
It all started by skidding downed trees from the back 40, nice to have the heavy equipment, laying out the pole locations and digging the holes with the Bobcat auger. Same process as last year, I added 3 rows of 5 poles and ran more ACSR through holes near the top and to a set of posts at the end with a boat trailer winch mounted on them for each row, so that I can lower each row for harvest separately. I spaced the rows 8' apart so I can put any of the equipment down each row, and poles are 27' apart, 6 plants between each pole which makes them about 4' apart, with a pole and 5-6' between species. This year as I had all the equipment, I used 22' poles planted 4' deep so I have 18' above ground. Raised most of the poles by hand but used the crawler loader to raise some of the big heavy end poles. I planted 60 plants this weekend and installed all the drip lines and emitters, got the drip system programmed then sat down for a beers last night, satisfied with the almost complete project. I will post some more pics with the winches mounted next post.
Still trying to decide what to use to hold the heavy sisal to the ground for them to grow on, but am thinking railway spikes as they are "locally" available. They are heavy, 6" long and free. I looked around town for another solution but couldn't find anything under $100.
Here are a few pics of the last few weeks of work. A long way from melting snow with shingles in March.
Cheers
It all started by skidding downed trees from the back 40, nice to have the heavy equipment, laying out the pole locations and digging the holes with the Bobcat auger. Same process as last year, I added 3 rows of 5 poles and ran more ACSR through holes near the top and to a set of posts at the end with a boat trailer winch mounted on them for each row, so that I can lower each row for harvest separately. I spaced the rows 8' apart so I can put any of the equipment down each row, and poles are 27' apart, 6 plants between each pole which makes them about 4' apart, with a pole and 5-6' between species. This year as I had all the equipment, I used 22' poles planted 4' deep so I have 18' above ground. Raised most of the poles by hand but used the crawler loader to raise some of the big heavy end poles. I planted 60 plants this weekend and installed all the drip lines and emitters, got the drip system programmed then sat down for a beers last night, satisfied with the almost complete project. I will post some more pics with the winches mounted next post.
Still trying to decide what to use to hold the heavy sisal to the ground for them to grow on, but am thinking railway spikes as they are "locally" available. They are heavy, 6" long and free. I looked around town for another solution but couldn't find anything under $100.
Here are a few pics of the last few weeks of work. A long way from melting snow with shingles in March.
Cheers