New Hop Garden 2014 (pic heavy)

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Harvest shears for chinook and Cascade may get pulled out this weekend. I just checked and it seems the majority of those cones have that "feel" to them now, so by Saturday they should be plenty ripe. The hardest part of this is trying to determine the perfect time. Both Zeus and Nugget have some weeks left. Hopefully they'll both be ready sometime after labor day, as that weekend will be crazy for us as a family. Only being able to do a weekend harvest is tough to coordinate.

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Those latest pictures you took look like something from a Home and Garden magazine! Beautiful man, very beautiful!

I am getting some yellow lupulin inside of my cones, however they still have a very green vegetables smell about them. Not sure how long it is going to take for them to mature. Starting to check them every other day now.
 
Okay. Round 1 of harvest is complete. Chinook and Cascade are fown, dried and sealed for use. Here are my totals comparing this year to last, so far.

Chinook
2014 - 17 oz.
2015 - 12.2 oz
Difference - -4.8 oz.
Percentage - -39%

Cascade
2014 - 4 oz.
2015 - 12 oz.
Difference - +8 oz.
Percentage - +300%

I think all the rain this year inhibited the overall cone production with Chinook. I'm wondering if others found the same issue? My Chinook is down 39% from last year (granted it is only one plant) but I assumed that since the roots were well established and it gets plenty of sun and fertilizer, I should increase yields, not see a decrease. Cascade on the other hand had a dramatic increase from year 1 to year 2. This is most definitely attributed to a healthier and more established root system. I guess we will see with the others in the coming weeks when Zeus and Nugget are in for harvest.

Oddly enough, I didn't snap an overall harvest picture before they went in the oast... here's what I have.
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Well, a mixed start to your harvest... but impressive yield from the cascade! Are you going to harvest the others soon, or do they not feel/smell ready?
 
WilliamSlayer said:
Well, a mixed start to your harvest... but impressive yield from the cascade! Are you going to harvest the others soon, or do they not feel/smell ready?
Click to expand...

The others will likely come down in 2 weeks. There are a lot of immature cones on them.



WilliamSlayer said:
How was the 'cutting down' in terms of ease? I am reading about guys climbing ladders... and smiling about my setup!
Click to expand...

It takes a little extra care to cut down the sides that are adjacent so I don't get varieties mixed up too much. I think that I ended up with some Zeus in my cascade (about 30 or so cones) because the aroma was VASTLY different than the cascade cones after I handled them. Unfortunately, that had made it into the bucket before I smelled my hands. Otherwise it's a matter of cutting the ropes at the eyelets, then severing the bine about 3 feet from the base. I'll carry all of it for the garage and start picking through the tangled mess. It takes about an hour start to finish per plant, but I'm pretty careful in picking the hop at the top of the bine and not breaking it at the sprig.
 
It was not hard, but a bit more time consuming than I thought! The main reason being.... a ton of hops! Holy cow I was not expecting to get over 2 lbs (wet), but that's my rough weigh in.

I immediately started a fresh hops pale ale. ;-)

@Thaymond - thanks again for the inspiration. With the root now well established and the cage set for next year, what can I do to insure great results again?

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WilliamSlayer said:
It was not hard, but a bit more time consuming than I thought! The main reason being.... a ton of hops! Holy cow I was not expecting to get over 2 lbs (wet), but that's my rough weigh in.

I immediately started a fresh hops pale ale. ;-)

@Thaymond - thanks again for the inspiration. With the root now well established and the cage set for next year, what can I do to insure great results again?
Click to expand...

1. Replicate your soil. Mushroom compost, manure, topsoil in a three part mix. I neglected this, and got mediocre results, despite near religious fertilizer schedule.

2. Fertilize regularly.

3. Water. Regularly. Rain screwed me this year, I think.

Time.

Good work on year 1. I'm doing these things this next season, and I'm shooting for 5 lbs dry.
 
Mid February, and you know what that means?! That's right! Time to begin haunting the growing hops threads and start tending to the plants and trellis.

This winter was reasonably mild, but still had some significant cold snaps. After last year and the month of sub zero temperatures and wind chills below -40, I think my plants will survive just fine. But, just to be sure, I covered them in a 6 inch layer of mulched leaves and grass clippings. It should be great fun cleaning that up...

I also put down a layer of rich soil on the beds for over winter, to help leach some nutrients into the soil once everything melts. Once everything thaws and I dig up some rhizomes, I'll take the new soil and turn it in with the old stuff, to help enrich everything. Likely I'll also throw in a layer of the mushroom compost and manure, since that was the original plan anyway. That should give them some rich, nutrient-dense strata to work with.

I've had some people approach me about rhizomes, which is interesting. I'm hoping to be able to dig up several per plant. I've even started a couple in pots just so a buddy would get a decent yield in his first year. Those will be shipped to him in March, once the ice melts.

I'm looking forward to another great year, another hearty yield, and hopefully inspiring others with a design that allows for a low profile trellis.
 
I briefly got into the beds today to find some little white sproutlets on all plants. I will be cleaning the boxes out and rhizome pruning this weekend. Even cascade is putting out some sprouts away from the crown, which is great.

I have 3 crowns I'll be sending to a friend in KC, so I have to ready those for shipping. All three survived the winter and have some leafy purple and green sprouts on them. Hop season is around the corner and I am very excited.
 
Looking forward to the season too! It will be my second, the first year my plants didn't do too much so I am hoping for better results. I like the idea of your diagonal design and may try something similar this year.
 
Got out and un mulched the beds and hunted for rhizomes. We are all ready for growing season here in IL. Now the weather just needs to warm up.
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I was able to get 25 rhizomes this year.

Nugget: 6
Zeus: 4
Cascade: 0 :'(
Chinook: 15

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They are all bagged and tagged. I tilled in some of the soil amendments from last year and will have some rain here shortly to shore it all up. I'll get the lines up soon. I think I'm going to cross corners at the 6 foot mark, and have a line go down the center of the cage to catch extra growth. This worked well in year 1, allowing for some additional bines to grow. We'll see.
 
Came over here to find a thread like this. I'm fairly new to growing, my wife/kids bought me a small plant from Whole Foods last year and it did pretty well in a small planter. Now that I've got some space in the yard, I'm going to build a structure along the lines of thaymond/WilliamSlayer.

I already noticed some growth in my container, once the temps stabilize here in Northern Ohio I'll stick them in the ground.

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Boy I just read this whole thread and now I've caught the bug! Unfortunately I won't be closing on my house until late May :'(

My time in Germany reminded me much of my native New England climate, so I feel hops will do well here. How big could I expect it to grow by late May? Small enough to transport about 10 miles if I started in a planter?
 
Based on my experience from last year you should be pretty bushy by then, but if a few bines break, the awesome thing about these guys is how they seem to grow right from the break point almost as soon as it happens.
 
Okay - loving this thread as a first time hops grower on Southern Connecticut.

Cross posted this in another hops growing thread but wasn't able to upload the whole build thread of photos (apparently a limitation of the new mobile version of this forum).

Anyway - I decided to copy the 2x2 by 12" deep boxes from previous posts in this thread. Got started yesterday. Photos should speak for themselves except to say that SWMBO was very awesome and supportive of me hacking into the side garden for this project. I had to relocate a rose bush and a hydrangea, but that seems a small price to pay for a pretty sweet spot on the Southern side of the house near a spigot.

Enjoy... more to come after I string the coir climbers today.

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philipmeese said:
Okay - loving this thread as a first time hops grower on Southern Connecticut.

Cross posted this in another hops growing thread but wasn't able to upload the whole build thread of photos (apparently a limitation of the new mobile version of this forum).

Anyway - I decided to copy the 2x2 by 12" deep boxes from previous posts in this thread. Got started yesterday. Photos should speak for themselves except to say that SWMBO was very awesome and supportive of me hacking into the side garden for this project. I had to relocate a rose bush and a hydrangea, but that seems a small price to pay for a pretty sweet spot on the Southern side of the house near a spigot.

Enjoy... more to come after I string the coir climbers today.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words! Yours also looks good. Mine sit on the north side of my yard, but still get good sun. I wonder what it would look like on my southern fence. Unfortunately that's where the kids play, so I couldn't plant it there. Best of luck on your build and growing season!
 
Finished running the climber lines today with the help of my two boys. That roofline is 25 feet above the garden so no way I had a ladder that high. Had to get up on the roof with drill, caulking gun, coir bundles and screw eyes to rig them. Rigged a big old line I had around as a safety line. Seems like a big production for my 2 Centennial and 2 Cascade rhizomes. Expecting those soon I guess.

Yesterday evening my lab went digging in my freshly topsoiled and manured grow pits. Arrgh. Guess she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Bought some chicken wire today to keep that from happening again once I get the rhizomes in.

I had 50 foot bundles of coir so I was able to run them up from the grow boxes to the eye and back down to a cleat mounted on the wall. At the end of the season I should be able to let the bines down to the ground and harvest them without having to climb back up to the roof again.

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Got a message from Farmhouse Brewing Supply yesterday that my rhizomes have shipped. Expected to arrive tomorrow. Perfect timing! Very psyched.
 
I have several purple heads poking out after doing the rhizome dig. I'm planning on taking only the strongest after Tax Day. After that, I'm stringing the lines, and it's game on!

I'm thinking of different ways of stringing the lines this year so that I don't end up having too hard of a time training bines as I've had in the last 2 years. Once it hits the back of the trellis, it's very hard to manage. I will have to put some thought into it, but I have a few ideas.

Anyway, onto the pics!
Nugget
View attachment 1459448202256.jpg
Zeus
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Cascade
View attachment 1459448261795.jpg
Chinook
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philipmeese said:
Finished running the climber lines today with the help of my two boys. That roofline is 25 feet above the garden so no way I had a ladder that high. Had to get up on the roof with drill, caulking gun, coir bundles and screw eyes to rig them. Rigged a big old line I had around as a safety line. Seems like a big production for my 2 Centennial and 2 Cascade rhizomes. Expecting those soon I guess.

Yesterday evening my lab went digging in my freshly topsoiled and manured grow pits. Arrgh. Guess she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Bought some chicken wire today to keep that from happening again once I get the rhizomes in.

I had 50 foot bundles of coir so I was able to run them up from the grow boxes to the eye and back down to a cleat mounted on the wall. At the end of the season I should be able to let the bines down to the ground and harvest them without having to climb back up to the roof again.
Click to expand...

Having the cleat will help with harvesting. I ran to my roof in my first year of growing too. I'm glad I didn't do that again. I had to get up on the roof and untangle an angry nugget plant from the satellite dish it tried to eat. It was such a pain.

Once those plants get established, the side of your house is going to look like a jungle. It will be very cool. It's a fun little side-hobby to have, and when all is said and done, you have hops for your beer. Best of luck on this year's growing season and harvest!
 
It's not much, but here had been the progress over 2 weeks. Cold Temps and not much sun is holding them back. I've read a few posts and threads about not doing the full trim back. I'm considering only taking the strongest of the non-bull shoots and trimming the rest because of out crummy April. This could give me some extra green grow time before they flower, meaning a possible bigger harvest. I have already done my soil and fertilizer amendments, so we're should be taking off pretty quickly here.

Nugget
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Zeus
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Cascade
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Chinook
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I'm hoping to see some good progress this weekend, at least with identifying which are my bulls.
 
Putting my existing plant and a rhizome I picked up in the ground this weekend. Seems like compost/manure/top soil is the ticket for planting these guys, yeah?
 
What a difference a few days makes. The pics above were last Thursday. These were taken this afternoon, 4 days later.

Nugget
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Zeus
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Cascade
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Chinook
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Chinook and Nugget obviously have some rhizomes that are running out from the main crowns. I may trim them back a second time this season and do some potted plants. I still have some rhizomes for sale as well.

I'm thinking of running lines this weekend. I'll post updates once they're up. If the warm weather continues, I'll have to begin training. I'm like a month early, which is awesome. That will give more time for the green growth phase, and hopefully more nodes for sidearms and flowers.
 
Oh boy, oh boy! I just finished reading and I have really enjoyed this thread. This will be my first year and have learned a lot just from reading this.

I have Centennial, Chinook, Columbus (CTZ) and Comet on the way. I just bought materials on my lunch break for a trellis. Since space is not of concern for me, I'm going with a pair of A-frames with a steel cable suspended between them and staked on either end. Then I found some heavy twine that is supposed to support at least 39 LB. Although I just realized I did not buy enough. I have 8 plants total so I will run two 15 ft pieces to the wire for each plant, making a V for each plant. If they are all 15 ft, then I will need 240 ft. I bought 150 ft. Oops.
 
Busy day today. 4 am start to a brew day, made a palate wrecking DIPA at 104 IBUS and 1 lb of homegrown hops in the boil. It was nuts. It got hard to stir there was so much. The gravity sample tasted amazing.

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Then I got to lines up for the trellis. I'll need to replenish the hops after this DIPA monster.

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The hops grew like mad today. The growing season begins! Some bines are already over a foot tall, even after hacking all the initial growth back early in April. I'm hoping that we will get amazing growth and even better yield this season.
 
thaymond said:
Busy day today. 4 am start to a brew day, made a palate wrecking DIPA at 104 IBUS and 1 lb of homegrown hops in the boil. It was nuts. It got hard to stir there was so much. The gravity sample tasted amazing.

View attachment 351587

Then I got to lines up for the trellis. I'll need to replenish the hops after this DIPA monster.

View attachment 351588

The hops grew like mad today. The growing season begins! Some bines are already over a foot tall, even after hacking all the initial growth back early in April. I'm hoping that we will get amazing growth and even better yield this season.
Click to expand...

So are those bines that we can see in the bottom pic the ones you'll end up training around the twine?
 
thaymond said:
Some of them, yes. There's a few bull shoots that are there. I shan't be training them.
Click to expand...

So are the bull shoots the tallest of the bunch in the pics? Aren't the bull shoots are hollow? Is there a way to pick them out by the feel or do they usually grow the tallest first? I just want to make sure I trim back the right bines.
 
If you gently pinch bines, you can feel if they're hollow or not. I'll pick a big bine, pinch it, and if there is some give, it's hollow. Bull shoots are usually the largest in diameter and most aggressive bines, and have the greatest distances between nodes. I can't remember where I read this, but it holds true most of the time.

You want a strong bine that has shorter distances between nodes. The more nodes, there sidearms, the more potential for hops.
 
thaymond said:
If you gently pinch bines, you can feel if they're hollow or not. I'll pick a big bine, pinch it, and if there is some give, it's hollow. Bull shoots are usually the largest in diameter and most aggressive bines, and have the greatest distances between nodes. I can't remember where I read this, but it holds true most of the time.

You want a strong bine that has shorter distances between nodes. The more nodes, there sidearms, the more potential for hops.
Click to expand...

Ok cool thanks. And nodes are the offshoots as the bine grows?
 

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