Netting for Hops

[jleiii]

We had a small local hop farmer give a talk at a recent homebrew club meeting, and this gave me the idea to use netting (on a smaller scale than him!) for my hops. Last year I grew them on sisal rope up the side of my house, and for a first year plants they did OK. This year I've added 4 more crowns from Great Lakes Hops to the 4 from last year. I will be moving them to the back yard and rigging them up the side of my 'boat shed' where they should get maximum sun, and more room to grow.

I searched and searched for the kind of netting the hop guy talked about, and finally found Memphis Net. From the home page you'd never know they sell netting for plants, but my search got me deep into their site. Apparently crop netting falls under fishing. Go figure.

After searching their products I settled on one that was the perfect size, or so it seemed. It's 3ft wide (by 392 ft long), in a 6"x6" profile, similar to the pic below. At 3ft wide there are 7 vertical strands that I can train the bines up. I have about 14ft of height to work with.

The thing I'm not so sure about now is how the bines will take to the thin strands. I was looking for a rope/string netting, but they were too expensive. I plan to run sisal rope up the 2 sides to give it a more secure attachment. The netting along should be strong enough to hold them, but I expect they'll blow around with out the rope supports.

Has anyone grown hops on real thin netting like this? Any thoughts/concerns?

 

[dobe12]

Barley Legal Home Brewers?


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[jleiii]

Barley Legal Home Brewers?

Yep.

 

[dobe12]

That guy was cool. The best part was when someone asked him if he actually makes money off the hops and he just laughed.

 

[GVH_Dan]

So are you going to double the netting to go up 14 feet?

I've known some people that tried doing small scale commercial hops with netting like this. Theirs was about 8 foot tall. The idea was to keep them short and use some sort of tractor device from Czech to pick in the field. The netting held just fine but they had several other problems.

- to only go 8 feet, you need a dwarf hop variety. Most of those are patent protected so they wouldn't get much yield out of the hops they grew. (Sort of applies to you if you stop at 7 feet.)

- The harvester was really expensive. Plus imagine sitting on top of a tractor that's only a few feet wide but 10+ feet high. Every bump had you fearing for your life. (Doesn't apply to you.)

- The first year the hops grew great. They hand picked and left the bines to grow. The second year, the old bines helped give support to the netting for the next years bines to grow. Again they hand picked. The third year, the new bines were having problems finding space in the netting because it was full of old dead bines. By the fourth year they had to replace all the netting because it was so full of old bines. Of course at the cost of the netting, they could have run a decade or more of coir twine. So keep in mind, you have to take the old bines out at some point or replace the netting.

- I have heard stories of people getting netting that didn't hold but I've never talked to anyone first hand that had a failure. I suspect there is enough strength in the netting to support the bines until the bines get thick enough to reinforce the netting.

So, feel free to use the stuff. If you have limited space and want to let the bine reach out a bit or provide extra shading, this may work well. You'll probably have to cut the netting down every few years and figure out how to dispose of it (with all those bine mixed in) but that's not unmanageable. There's always the neighbors' garbage cans, right?

 

[GVH_Dan]

That guy was cool. The best part was when someone asked him if he actually makes money off the hops and he just laughed.

That's too bad but at least it seems he's realistic about it. There's money to be made but too many put forth a half-a**ed/hobbyist effort and then blame everyone else when they don't make any money. Did he at least leave some samples for the homebrew club members?

 

[dobe12]

That's too bad but at least it seems he's realistic about it. There's money to be made but too many put forth a half-a**ed/hobbyist effort and then blame everyone else when they don't make any money. Did he at least leave some samples for the homebrew club members?

He has a farm and grows other crops, raises animals (alpaca I think). So the hop thing was just him trying to get into something new. It definitely sounded very tough to make a buck in that business. The big guys out west have the market pretty locked down. He has sold to a few local breweries, but nothing to sustain them or him.

Sadly.... No samples


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[jleiii]

So are you going to double the netting to go up 14 feet?

The netting is 3ft wide, and on a roll, so I just roll out what I need and cut it. I should be at about 14 ft.

So, feel free to use the stuff. If you have limited space and want to let the bine reach out a bit or provide extra shading, this may work well. You'll probably have to cut the netting down every few years and figure out how to dispose of it (with all those bine mixed in) but that's not unmanageable. There's always the neighbors' garbage cans, right?

I plan to lower the netting for harvest so this is not an issue. For the cost of the material it's not worth the effort to clean off the bines, so it will all go at the end of the season. The roll is long enough for 3 seasons if I don't reuse it.

This is the area where it's going.

 

[HALIFAXHOPS]

I experimented with it a few years ago, and to me it was such a hassle when it came to harvest I dropped it. I had quite a few plants though....