Hop growing up side of 2 story house...Advice Needed

I have looked around and cant really find a lot of information about people growing up the house, most are using trellis's.

Because the back of my house faces due south and is ~17 feet high i wanted to just grow up the sides...it seems like it should work in my head i'd just like your advice.

Basically my plan was to have eye bolts screwed into the wooden eaves under my gutter that are maybe a foot or two away from the siding, string some twine up through them, stake one end of the twine into the ground(somehow), and keep the other end of the twine off at an angle so nothing grows on it and stake it down as well.

Then when the time comes to harvest, just pull the angled one out, and let the slack twine out, harvest, then pull it back up if needed...seems pretty straight forward to me but i cant find anyone doing it so it makes me worry im missing something lol.
I could also replace the eye bolt with a pulley, although i'm not seeing the benefit of doing that? I don't see the twine/rope rubbing against the eye bolt the few times i raise/lower it being a huge deal as long as the twine is heavy duty enough? Again i have no experience so im really speaking out my ass

Also would it be a bad idea to bring the rope down as it reaches the eye bolt at the top? Obviously if the hops overgrow into it/around it, its not going to slack down. I figured as it approached the top i would let out another 3-5 feet to let it keep growing. But ive also read that the hops dont like to flower and produce cones until they are done growing, so by artificially increasing the length it has to grow repeatedly will it screw up the flowering/cone production?

 

Ok. I'll start by saying definitely doable. I'm not sure about your plan to lower the bines as they approach the top. Not only will it be difficult to do this without kinking the lower bine (which you definitely don't want to do) but also mature crowns can produce bines up to 25-30 feet long. You wouldn't want 10 feet of bine sitting on the ground in a big dense pile. It will invite pests, increase chances for mechanical injury and also promote mold growth. You are pretty much limited to two options at this point. Either prune the bines just before they reach the top or make a v patern with your twine and train the bines back down towards the ground. The probem with training them back down is that it has to be done manually because bines don't naturally grow toward the ground. Bines grow incredibly fast and you might have to do this everyday for a while. If you purne them, they will bush out horizontally and will not gain too much more vertically. This is actually what I do with mine. I haven't noticed much (if any) decrease in harvest due to pruning. It is a little more difficult to harvest because it's bushier and harder to get at some of the cones, but that's about the only downfall. To prune them, you just cut off the tip of the bine. Usually about 1-2 inches worth. As for a lowering system for harvest, I think the idea would be to have a second rope that holds up your ties for the twine. This way your raising and lowering system is independant of the bine support string. I think a pulley would be a good idea for the second rope. Bines get pretty darn heavy, especially if you have a few plants.

 

Yea bringing it down i didnt really think about it piling up on the ground.

Im a bit confused about your lowering idea though. The part about the second rope holding up the ties? I planned on just looping twine through stationary permanent eyelet thats screwed into the top of my eaves....

 

You could do that, but like I said, the bines get pretty heavy. They will also grow laterally and tangle up together if you have them fairly close to each other. Plus, you usually want more than one string per plant. 4-6 bines and 2-3 bines per string. I was thinking that one fixture that has all the eyelets affixed to it rigged to a pulley would be the easiest way to lower everything down at once instead of one string at a time.

 

Gotcha, i was planning on doing 3 strings from each plant up.

I have 3 varieties

So i would have 3 eyelets screwed in, and 3 twines going up to each eyelet...they are planning on being 5' spaced apart, so i dont know if i need to worry about them combining forces on me or not?

 

I grew on the side of my house last year. Did large eye screws on either end plus a triangular contraption to keep the bines from actually touching the house. Strung thin steel cable horizontally between the 2 eye screws, then hung twine off that. Secured the twine in the ground with pieces of wire kinda like those croquet gates. Best part, it's against the house, so you can do multiple harvests with a ladder!

 

Yea, turns out i greatly underestimated how big of a ladder i need to reach 17 feet in the air safely

Tried borrowing someones big extension ladder but no luck, gonna have to invest in a 24' fiberglass ladder or something...cant decide if i want to rent or just buy one...never realized ladders were so damn expensive.

 

I have my trellis at 12 feet and prune the bines when they reach the top. Makes it easier to reach with a ladder. You could hang some chain from your eye bolts and tie the twine to it so that you could make the set up lower to the ground.

 

It's a little late, but I just ran across this and a similar post and wanted to chime in. Found this on a different forum but the guy pretty much did the same thing as was suggested with eye bolts and dog chain screws.

http://hbd.org/discus/messages/43688/44421.html?1206816188

 

I ran all of mine up the side of a 2 story house until this year. I initially tried the same thing that you suggested about 3 years ago and it did not work. The plants I had actually outgrew the height and tangled up in the lines etc. and it was a PITA to lower everything down so I just got a big ladder instead. That worked better and I was able to keep the bines up and have multiple harvests on more than one plant. About 2 weeks ago I transplanted the entire garden to another place in the yard and they will have much more room to grow. Now I need to get another ladder though.

beerloaf

 

I put one eye screw in the side of the house and tied 2 strings for the planter at the top.

I suppose i could have tied them to another line and anchored at the bottom for easier lowering, but i have a 20ft ladder that gets up there pretty easily.

Hops the pics help!



2013 hops full album

 

Thanks, thats nearly identical to what im going to have setup. He has one big 2x4 parallel to his gutters, i have a bunch of shorter 2x4's parallel coming out from the house to near the gutter to screw into.

DIdnt even think of dog chain stakes, i just bought some regular old 28' garden stakes...i think they should work though just as well and were only 99c each.

 

Great info here, 1st time grower. I purchased some centenial and CTZ rhizomes and am thinking I will grow up the side of the house as well. I have a one story house prob about 12' -15' of height. The weight of the bines is what worries me, I don't have an eve to attach to so I am going to have to get creative. Thanks for the link reson