Apartment/Container Growing on the back deck...

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blawjr

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Thought I'd make a thread fopr all you guys who can't grow in the yard or native soil...and have to plant in containers....i used 55 gal plastic drums cut in half, and a "landscaping pole" to run rope through...here are some pics from first year:

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Ok so here goes year 2, year one I had 2 cascade's in one barrel, 1 columbus and 1 mystery variety given to me for free from an hbt member....I've gotten everything ready for this season, including ordering a centennial and digging up one of the cascade crowns out of cascade barrel and planting it in the ground...(which gives me 1 centennial, 1 columbus, 2 cascade, and one mystery variety)....i'm excited to see this years crop!

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I have a few self watering, closed system container gardens that I use based upon this set up here for growing tomatoes and herbs... You might find it very interesting... This is where I got the idea



I just put in for 4 rizomes of chinook and centennial, and I will be setting up the trellis and twine essentially how you did it, and doing a self watering set up. Looks great!!
 
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yea i have a self watering container i made out of one of these barrels with a mini herb garden in it, just didnt use it for the hops, dont know why
 
A fellow HBT member generously sent me some more rhizomes so I now have 5 varieties: cascade, columbus, centennial, willamette, and nugget. I also still have the mystery variety, which I most likely will just let it grow for show. I did yank the mystery hops out of the large container and put willamette in its place. I cut up the mystery rhizome and planted in 3 smaller containers and placed them next to a fence and I'll just let them do whatever they want. Bonus: I found some huge cicada larvae in my hop barrel while digging :eek:

Here are a few pics from today:

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Adorable kid, sir :)

Where did you acquire the 55-gallon white plastic drums? Also, what is the chicken wire supposed to keep out - have you had issues in the past with something trying to nibble the vines? Finally, any reason you switched from natural fiber twine to what looks like yellow nylon?

Sorry for all the questions - I live in a second-story apartment with a back deck, and I am looking to do something very similar this year (never grown hops before), and my brain keeps coming up with questions ;)
 
Adorable kid, sir :)

Where did you acquire the 55-gallon white plastic drums? Also, what is the chicken wire supposed to keep out - have you had issues in the past with something trying to nibble the vines? Finally, any reason you switched from natural fiber twine to what looks like yellow nylon?

Sorry for all the questions - I live in a second-story apartment with a back deck, and I am looking to do something very similar this year (never grown hops before), and my brain keeps coming up with questions ;)

Hah thanks...umm I get the drums from work, but I'm sure you could find something on craigslist. The chicken wire is to keep squirrels from digging, we have TONS of squirrels here and they kept digging last year and breaking new shoots so they could never get going at the start of the season. The rope change was just because I had some nylon rope lying around, the first year i made sure to use a rough fibrous rope so the hops would have something to hold on to, but after year one and seeing that the bines are actually quite "sticky" I'm sure they could grow on this just fine. Good luck and happy growing!
 
Ok so this is what I did to give it more height this year, we'll see how it goes...it's a 1 x 2 x 8 with little alternating finishing nails nailed into the sides...yes, it's very ghetto! :p we'll see what happens

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Update: the nugget(in the red pot) and the willamette(in the barrel) are up and chugging along, the nugget is as tall as me by now, and the willamette isn't far behind. Oddly, my 2nd year varieties just popped up this week and are still too small to justify a picture.

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I let the first year plants do whatever they want, no trimming. I'm let 3 bines grow on each of my 2nd yr plants.
 
Nice setup! I'm doing something really similar and had a question for you. Did you do anything to mount the landscaping poles to the barrel or are they just held up from sticking down into the dirt? I just have mine standing freely in the dirt at the moment and am wondering if mine will hold up in a storm (I may find out tonight...unfortunately).

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Nice setup! I'm doing something really similar and had a question for you. Did you do anything to mount the landscaping poles to the barrel or are they just held up from sticking down into the dirt? I just have mine standing freely in the dirt at the moment and am wondering if mine will hold up in a storm (I may find out tonight...unfortunately).

Oh yea my poles are set right up against the side of the pot and each is held in place by two nice sized bolts, a bit different from your design
 
I have crowns and rhizomes. Can I plant the rhizomes in pots for a year or two. I also have small plants. They are called field grade hops is what the company said. Little plants. Can I plant them in the ground or will a good rain drown them? Same with rhizomes?
 
Update: all the hops look really good, the first year rhizomes have kinda stalled but I have no doubt they'll pick back up. The Second year crowns look great. The one cascade crown I planted in the ground took a while to come alive, I thought it was dead at first but a few days ago it emerged and has grown at least 2 feet in a few days! Here's a few pics:

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The cascade and columbus are already beginning to climb the top piece...i'm very optimistic about this setup, once it fills in i doubt you'll be able to tell how ugly it is! :cross: The columbus already has a lot of burrs...

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I ended up stringing mine to the house by drilling a few special (Tapcon) screws into the mortar and then tying the strings around those. Here's what it looks like now...

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Nice! Mine are climbing pretty high up but no cones yet. Just starting to get the side shooting vines growing out of the main one on most of the plants. How do you know when the cones are coming? Or is it dependent on too wide of a variety of factors to say?

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Not really, every now and then i'll hit it with some basic miracle grow, but It's rained here so much this season I havent been able to
 
Huge cicada larvae too

For what it's worth those aren't Cicada larvae. They're beetle larvae of the family Scarabaeidae commonly referred to as grub worms and will ultimately become May and June Beetles. Nice hop garden!

Dan
 
Ok so here goes year 2, year one I had 2 cascade's in one barrel, 1 columbus and 1 mystery variety given to me for free from an hbt member....I've gotten everything ready for this season, including ordering a centennial and digging up one of the cascade crowns out of cascade barrel and planting it in the ground...(which gives me 1 centennial, 1 columbus, 2 cascade, and one mystery variety)....i'm excited to see this years crop!

How did you anchor the poles into the pots?? Or is the dirt just holding them? How high?
 
I got some crowns this year that I'm planning on putting in barrels... Any issues I should be concerned with long-term? I'm hoping to have them wrap around our metal gazebo (one of those from Lowe's - the cover and tarp walls shredded last year so I'm thinking of having hop plants wrap around the metal and create a nice green space...) just wondering how they would produce down the road vs in the ground...
 

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