Oregon Hops in the Gorge

[jmw22]

I thought I would post up some pics and updates of my hop project this spring on a thread for anyone interested. My wife's parents happen to own some orchard property in the Columbia River Gorge area, just south of Yakima which is one of the richest hop growing areas in the world. Sooo...why not plant some hops!!
I had planted 10 plants three years ago along a fence to supplement my home brewing and they've done really well. Here's a transplanted Nugget rhizome from a 3 yr. old plant:

This time, 60 plants went into the ground. We managed to score approx. 100 free poles from the railroad dept. when they came through and replaced theirs on the line next to the orchard. We also scored a bunch of high tensile rubber coated copper wire so our initial investment was only purchasing the rhizomes, a yard of compost for planting and a few irrigation parts to supplement the irrigation we already had in the orchard.

Here's my father-in-law and brother-in-law helping to set the poles:

Poles are set!

I planted 10 rhizomes of 6 different varieties: Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Magnum, Sterling & Willamette. Basically, I wanted to see how well each grows in this area before possibly committing more acreage to hops in a possible commercial venture further down the road.

Plants are sprouting after only 1 1/2 weeks in the ground!

Three weeks after planting, we strung up the lower wire and hooked up the irrigation drip system. I'll get some pictures of the irrigation setup this weekend when I'm back out there and I'll try to keep this thread updated as often as I can!

 

[jmw22]

Well I finally made it back out there to the farm to get the top wire and twine strung for the hops this past weekend. It was a good thing I did because some of the hops were almost 6' long already after their first 5 weeks in the ground.

We used the rubber coated copper wire for the top wire between poles (I still have reservations with the copper wire stretching over time, but this first season should show this). Here we are stretching the wire to the last pole:

I used sissal twine with a tensile strength of 75 lbs for the hops to grow on because I didn't have time to get anything stronger. it was only $13 for about 2250 ft. Has anyone else used this twine for their hops? Next year I plan to upgrade if necessary, but we'll see how this year pans out.

I even ran a few strings from the new poles over to the 3 yr. old Nugget hops on the fence to climb up. These hops are already going nuts this year...can't wait to see how they produce!

I live 2 hours from the farm so it makes it hard to get over there to tend to the crop, but I should be back over in a few weeks to fertilize the new hops and trim back the shoots on the older hops on the fence...If anyone has any input on what I'm doing right or wrong please feel free to chime in!