First time grower

[BayviewBrewer]

Ok so I plan on growing my own hops for the first time this spring. I'm going to be growing 3 kinds Chinook, cascade, and Willamette. I will be starting them off in 50 gallon plastic totes with a compost soil mix. I live in southern Delaware so any advice for growing in this part of the country would be awesome.

 

[corkybstewart]

Totes will work for a year or two but to experience any real growth they have to be free. Make sure you have good drainage on the totes also. How do you plan to trellis them?

 

[BayviewBrewer]

I plan on running 2 30 ft length sections of PVC as supports and than 1 10 ft length of PVC as a cross bar to run my twine up. I'm thinking 1in pipe for the whole thing and I'm going to anchor my PVC posts with cement. As for drainage in the totes I'm going to drill a bunch of holes in the bottom of each tote and I'm going to put a layer of stones along the bottom as well.

 

[day_trippr]

1" pvc "posts"?
With stays or without?
And how many plants?

Cheers!

 

[BayviewBrewer]

Yep 1 inch thick piping to build my trellis. I will have 3 plants and container grow for the first year. I'm not sure what a stay is in regards to hop going so I couldn't tell you.

 

[MadIslander]

I just ordered 40 Rhizomes and plan to set up 4 lines 6' apart 9' tall and 26" long hear in mid-coast Maine. My posts will be hemlock and all horizontals will be stainless-steel wire with raw twine for climbing.
It's my first grow so any help or input would be great.
I am not planting anything else around them for mowing and I feel they will take up most of my free time...

Cheers

 

[MadIslander]

Do you recommend starting in totes???

 

[day_trippr]

I don't, but only because I've seen what happens when you constrict a hop plant to a half-barrel planter. Sad...

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

Yep 1 inch thick piping to build my trellis. I will have 3 plants and container grow for the first year. I'm not sure what a stay is in regards to hop going so I couldn't tell you.

A "stay" would be a line (ideally, actually two lines in a Vee) running from the top of each riser to ground anchors, to keep those spindly pvc tubes from collapsing under the weight of the three hop plants.

A healthy hop plant can weigh twenty pounds or more. And a few or more plants hanging from a line in a good wind will put major lateral strain on a suspension system. Keep that in mind lest one day you end up with a pile of vegetation under a collapsed trellis...

Cheers!

 

[MadIslander]

Thanks
Do you recommend any reading that I should do b4 spring ?

 

[BayviewBrewer]

I only plan on doing the first year in totes so they can build up a good root system. I'm planing on putting them in the ground after the first season.

 

[corkybstewart]

There's a book, I think it's called The Homebrewer's Garden that has lots of good info. My trellis is made of 16' 4 X 6 beams cemented 2' into the ground. I've been told that's not high enough but it works fine for my garden. I use 1/4" oilfield wireline for the top line and the stays. That sucker is stout, even our spring winds don't affect it.
But hops also do very well trained along fences. I had 20' of chain link fence completely full of Cascades until the 2nd year of our terrible drought. They produced at least as many cones and were a lot easier to harvest.
freshops.com has some good info on growing hops too.

 

[BayviewBrewer]

Thank you for all the good info guys.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[MadIslander]

There's a book, I think it's called The Homebrewer's Garden that has lots of good info. My trellis is made of 16' 4 X 6 beams cemented 2' into the ground. I've been told that's not high enough but it works fine for my garden. I use 1/4" oilfield wireline for the top line and the stays. That sucker is stout, even our spring winds don't affect it.
But hops also do very well trained along fences. I had 20' of chain link fence completely full of Cascades until the 2nd year of our terrible drought. They produced at least as many cones and were a lot easier to harvest.
freshops.com has some good info on growing hops too.

Thanks for the info will check it out ASAP