Growing hops in southern california

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I have seen rhizomes at Smoking Beaver home brew shop in Escondido, not sure if they have any now. You can try calling some of the other lhbs in the area, I think they would point you in the right direction for local stuff.
 
Hi Gents,
I'm new to the forum; I'm a fellow San Diego Brewer, saw this thread, and figured its not a bad place for my first post conisdering it covers what I'm researching at the moment. I see this post hasn't been active in a year and a half, so I'm half not expecting a response!

I've decided I want to grow hops in my small backyard, and I'm seeing all the online resources that sell rhizomes are on back order (presumably until the spring when hops spring back to life). Do we have a local source here to acquire them?

Thanks in advance. I look forward to participating in the forums!

Welcome! There's lots of places to get great rhizomes, so it shouldn't be hard to get started, but if you drop me a line in late winter I should be able to get you started with some local ones. They're good fun to grow. :mug:
 
I've got tons of hop cones FIRST year here in North San Diego, CA. There's 3 of the 4 C's.... Centennial, Columbus and Cascade. We are 15 miles down the road from Stone Brewing which used to have hop plants in their garden but no longer! They may have given up but not me :D

I'd have to say the most important thing is to keep them well watered. You really should not worry about overwatering. Water every other day.

Last year I lost my entire crop when we had the 110 deg heat wave and wild fires. Also in my opinion FULL SUN is not good. Common sense tells me that Oregon crops probably don't like the roasting sun of SoCal.

Finally, our seasonless weather allows you to repair. I planted a pair of centennial rhizomes in March which succumbed to the bunny salad bar and were lost. I got some $2 discount rhizomes in May replanted and boom! Might not be a ton of hop cones on the replants but a massive root system ready for next year.:mug:
 
Welcome! There's lots of places to get great rhizomes, so it shouldn't be hard to get started, but if you drop me a line in late winter I should be able to get you started with some local ones. They're good fun to grow. :mug:

Thanks, Cram. I may take you up on that! :mug:
 
I notice that the last posts were basically 3 years ago, so I am interested in how some of those 1st year Hops are doing now.

I have 6 varieties I just put in the ground this year (Torrance, CA). Cascade, Centennial (both from rhizomes in March/April, climbing nicely) and Eroica, Old Mission, Shaddock, Zeus (1 year old plants from Great Lakes Hops, in ground July). The Zeus went into shock initially, but has three new shoots coming out to replace the dead leaves and stems, so I am hopeful.

Any advice for growing in the hot SoCal weather?

The first pic is the Centennial, morning shade afternoon sun.
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The second pic is the Cascade, full sun all day.
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Many Thanks!
 
Here's a picture of Chinook taken the other day in North San Diego county. These aren't ready to harvest yet but the centennial and Cascade in the yard are just waiting on me.
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Resurrecting this thread to share this years hop harvest.

I live on the boarder of LA and Kern county’s in a town called Tehachapi. The elevation at my house is 4400 feet. I harvested three, three year old CTZ plants today and was probably a week late. There was a fair amount of browning happening. I finished with one overflowing 5 gallon bucket that totaled 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

I’m curious who else has harvested and who’s getting close.
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Here's a picture of Chinook taken the other day in North San Diego county. These aren't ready to harvest yet but the centennial and Cascade in the yard are just waiting on me. View attachment 584646

Resurrecting this thread to share this years hop harvest.

I live on the boarder of LA and Kern county’s in a town called Tehachapi. The elevation at my house is 4400 feet. I harvested three, three year old CTZ plants today and was probably a week late. There was a fair amount of browning happening. I finished with one overflowing 5 gallon bucket that totaled 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

I’m curious who else has harvested and who’s getting close. View attachment 778494
So jealous. I ordered 4 Cascade and 4 Cashmere rhizomes this past winter and they arrived mid-May,,,,from Maine. I received what amounted to 8 bare sticks. They were planted immediately in a dedicated 8ft x 5ft planter box, and fertilized and watered per the instructions that came with them. And then we waited...and waited....and waited. Nothing. Finally around mid July I carefully moved the dirt away with my hands until I reached a rhizome. Then I carefully checked another one. Both looked exactly as they looked when they were put into the ground a couple months prior. Duds, all eight. :mad:
 
So jealous. I ordered 4 Cascade and 4 Cashmere rhizomes this past winter and they arrived mid-May,,,,from Maine. I received what amounted to 8 bare sticks. They were planted immediately in a dedicated 8ft x 5ft planter box, and fertilized and watered per the instructions that came with them. And then we waited...and waited....and waited. Nothing. Finally around mid July I carefully moved the dirt away with my hands until I reached a rhizome. Then I carefully checked another one. Both looked exactly as they looked when they were put into the ground a couple months prior. Duds, all eight. :mad:
I bought mine from Yakima valley. I had a pretty solid take rate.
 
I’m curious who else has harvested and who’s getting close.

I harvested the last weekend of July. Early, and probably a week or two early but we had a vicious hail come through the following weekend so I'm glad I went in early. On the flip side, I'm enjoying my fresh hop beer already. We had weird weather all season that caused problems with hops but I still pulled thirty ounces wet that went into the beer and just over half a pound dried of the remainder. I still have some of last year's harvest so not a big deal.
 
was probably a week late. There was a fair amount of browning happening

Based on my fairly limited experience, I would say those hops look about right. Good luck!!

I have had a hard time timing my harvest the last two years around when the hops are ready, and when I have time to harvest them. I find that here in Virginia, just about the time hops start to enter that stage, we get rain about every day.
 
The last two years here in SoCal, the Eroica and Centennial take off early, send up lots of runners for a month or two and die off, no arms, no cones nothing. I tore out the Centennial this year, might do the same to the Eroica as well. The Cascade (2nd plant, 1st one withered after two years) has no arms, just a few hops and just hit harvest point yesterday, but it's going to have to wait for an afternoon after work, when I can also harvest the Old Mission and Chinook-both, no arms, but at least some hops. The Multihead Medusa, which I thought would do great in the heat here died after two weeks in the ground. I have a Comet 1st year, so hoping for something next year from it. This year they got a little fertilizer in addition to compost mulch (which is every year, 2x a year). IDK what I'm doing wrong, but it has to be something. I have tried Nugget, Cluster, Shaddock, they basically grow 6-10' and then die off annually.
 
@CascadesBrewer i was a little more selective than I wanted to be. There were more brown cones tossed which didn’t make the bucket and photo.

@JAReeves if you’re fairly close and your Medusa hasn’t fully died off I’d love to buy some rhizome off you.
 
@CascadesBrewer i was a little more selective than I wanted to be. There were more brown cones tossed which didn’t make the bucket and photo.

@JAReeves if you’re fairly close and your Medusa hasn’t fully died off I’d love to buy some rhizome off you.
I wish, it literally dried up and died in two weeks.

9pm PST, 8/22/22, Great Lakes Hops has NeoMex in stock.
 
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I wish, it literally dried up and died in two weeks.

9pm PST, 8/22/22, Great Lakes Hops has NeoMex in stock.
Very delayed here. Shipping was a little more than I was willing to spend so I passed.

As spring arrives, I have ground break. I’ll post a couple of pictures this week, after I clear the weeds.
 
This year I bought 9 rhizomes from YVH and they arrived a week or so ago. I ordered 3 Centennial, 3 Cascade, and 3 CTZ. These look so much better than the 8 I received last year, purchased through AIH (now owned by Northern Brewer). So this year's went in the ground this past Thursday and already have a few sprouts breaking the surface.

I've also been in touch with AIH (NB) and they've agreed to replace the 8 rhizomes from last year than were DOA. Last year's were shipped from Maine. No idea if that will be the same now that they're owned by NB.
 
View attachment 821471
It’s been cool here still. Highs in the 50’s and low 60’s and nights in the high 30’s and 40’s but I think we’re finally turning that spring corner.
They look great. Looks like you planted around the same time as we planted ours. I'm pretty much due east of you, near the coast. Our Cascade plants are over 6ft tall and the Centennial and CTZ are around 3ft so far. Still waiting for AiH to replace last year's failures. I have order numbers but they're still "in process."
 
I planted centennial, chinook and CTZ 4 years ago. The centennial never broke ground and I forgot which of these is which but one grows like hell and the other barely does ok. The last 2 years I’ve gotten enough for a 5 gallon batch which is all I really desired.
 
Mine are all over the place in heights, but it has been overcast and cold since Christmas in the South Bay of L.A. I am hoping they start jumping with the warmer weather this weekend.
 
Our YVH rhizomes were planted 2 months ago today. The Centennial is the slowest grower of the three varieties at around 4ft. The CTZ are about 6ft tall, and the Cascade is currently over 10ft tall. To date I have not seen any cones but that's fine, they seem very healthy.
 
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I've also been in touch with AIH (NB) and they've agreed to replace the 8 rhizomes from last year than were DOA. Last year's were shipped from Maine. No idea if that will be the same now that they're owned by NB.
Was out of town for a few days and when I checked the mail yesterday there were (finally!!) two packages of rhizomes from AiH, by way of Maine. Was supposed to get 4 Cascade and 4 Cashmere but the farm didn't have a great quantity of Cashmere so I asked for Chinook instead. None of these looked as good as any of the rhizomes I received from YVH but they did have some shoots on them, unlike last year. They were planted yesterday so we'll see what happens. I'll consider any yield at all a bonus.
 
Yesterday, just two days after planting these latest rhizomes, the first couple shoots popped out of the ground. Looks like at least something from AiH (via the Maine hop farm) is growing.
 
I've got a comet, a cashmere, a chinook and an amalia in their 2nd year here in Bakersfield, but didn't get any cones. I've also got three unknowns from seed that have made it to their second year.
 
I've got a comet, a cashmere, a chinook and an amalia in their 2nd year here in Bakersfield, but didn't get any cones. I've also got three unknowns from seed that have made it to their second year.
I’m just up the hill in Tehachapi. I tried growing some cascade and centennial in Riverside (similar climate to bake-O) several years ago. The best I could do was 12-15 sad, small cones per bine.
 
I’ve got a bit of a late bloomer here in Long Beach. This is a first year Cascade, planted mid-April. Picked one 8oz harvest 4 weeks ago, and now there is a second harvest ready to go. Fairly mild summer here, and I think it really likes living next to the compost bin.
 

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