What types of beers do you typically brew? My opinion is that growing aroma hops for pale ales and IPA will give a home grower the best bang for their buck and time and energy. Home growing hops for bittering a bit of a crapshoot, since you won’t know the exact AA of your hops.
Cascade isn’t the “sexiest” hop on the market these days, but it grows well just about everywhere. My cascade plant produces more hops in a season than I can use. Either way, the ability to brew a yearly wet hop ale makes it all more than worthwhile.
Growing something like Willamette or Goldings would be good if you like brewing darker or malt forward beers. That said, personally, I rarely use more than 2-3 oz of hops for a 5 gal batch of that style. So growing 1-2 lbs of willamette would be overkill for me.
If you’re interested in trying to grow something a little more “out there”. I’d suggest browsing Great Lakes Hops website. They have arguably the best selection of rooted plants available anywhere.
https://www.greatlakeshops.com/
If you want to grow something unique for the pale ale/IPA category, the varieties that stand out to me are Multihead, Neo 1, Willow Creek, Cashmere, Triumph, Alpharoma and their heritage collection. It’s hard to know how any of those I named will perform in your part of the country, but you’ll never know till you try.
Hope that helps and best of luck!
