Anticipating Irene, today I went ahead and harvested most of my first year Centennial, Chinook and Cascades. I picked all of the most ripe cones and left the rest, hopefully for a post-apocalypse harvest.
Took some "Before" pics, fwiw...
Centennial on the right, Chinook on the left, with a Trumpet Vine in between.
The Cascades, hiding behind a Butterfly Bush and hemmed in by a Trumpet Vine.
Cascades close up.
Chinooks and Centennials looked similar (hit the 10 pic/post limit so I had to cut those)....
Anyway, I needed to come up with a way to dry the cones, so I built three stackable frames out of 1x3 pine, with routed slots to hold some borrowed window screens.
With the screens ready to go I went out and picked like there was no tomorrow (because there might just not be one for the hops!) I harvested about 3/4 of the Cascades, 2/3 of the Chinooks, and nearly all of the Centennials.
Not too bad for first years!
Once I had weighed the hops, I set a pair of box fans on milk crates on the shop floor, positioned a couple of saw horses over them, then started assembling the drying screens. Bottom layer was the Centennials...
...followed by the Chinooks...
...and topped with the Cascades.
I thumb-tacked some screening over the top of the stack to keep the Cascades from floating away.
Finally, I surrounded the stack with some plywood panels to help contain the wind a bit. Got a good enough flow through the stack to float some loose Cascade petals so I think this is going to work just fine!
As it turned out, it was probably a good thing that Irene got me moving, because there were a heck of a lot of ripe cones to pick that I might have let go too long otherwise.
The whole house smells amazing right now...
Cheers!
Took some "Before" pics, fwiw...
Centennial on the right, Chinook on the left, with a Trumpet Vine in between.
The Cascades, hiding behind a Butterfly Bush and hemmed in by a Trumpet Vine.
Cascades close up.
Chinooks and Centennials looked similar (hit the 10 pic/post limit so I had to cut those)....
Anyway, I needed to come up with a way to dry the cones, so I built three stackable frames out of 1x3 pine, with routed slots to hold some borrowed window screens.
With the screens ready to go I went out and picked like there was no tomorrow (because there might just not be one for the hops!) I harvested about 3/4 of the Cascades, 2/3 of the Chinooks, and nearly all of the Centennials.
Not too bad for first years!
Once I had weighed the hops, I set a pair of box fans on milk crates on the shop floor, positioned a couple of saw horses over them, then started assembling the drying screens. Bottom layer was the Centennials...
...followed by the Chinooks...
...and topped with the Cascades.
I thumb-tacked some screening over the top of the stack to keep the Cascades from floating away.
Finally, I surrounded the stack with some plywood panels to help contain the wind a bit. Got a good enough flow through the stack to float some loose Cascade petals so I think this is going to work just fine!
As it turned out, it was probably a good thing that Irene got me moving, because there were a heck of a lot of ripe cones to pick that I might have let go too long otherwise.
The whole house smells amazing right now...
Cheers!