Growing Hops Near Chicago

[FuzzeWuzze]

Resurrecting as I recently moved to the Chicago area from South Carolina, where growing hops is nearly impossible. Wandering if anything has changed in 2 years with growing hops in the area.

I have a plan for my trellis, about 15' tall, and a spot picked in my yard which gets about 6 hrs of sun spring to summer and faces west.

Planning on growing Cascade, Mt Hood, Centennial, and Nugget; 2 mounds each. Any suggestions would be great, or if anyone is growing these in there area already and would like to share some cuttings, I would much appreciate the help.

Thats a lot of space requirements, you should keep a 5 foot gap between plants at a minimum , can maybe be a bit smaller if you plant the same variety next to eachother...but separate varieties should be kept way apart...i'd say if your planting that many you'll need probably 30 feet of space minimum, 40 would be better.

 

[JPFuller]

I live in Chicago, and last year got two crowns each of Santiam, Mt Hood and Centennial from Great Lakes.

Created a slightly raised bed and combined my soil with a combination of potting soil/garden soil/peat moss, digging holes about 18" in the bed and filling with the same mix-if you don't know already, we have heavy clay soil here underlaying the top soil, and hops aren't crazy about getting their feet wet.

Planted the crowns in an area of the yard that gets between 6-8 hours of sunlight depending on the month, which is a bit less than ideal and amended the soil twice during the summer with fertilizer.

Upshot? Centennial did the best, growing to a height of 23-25 feet by the end of summer, (outgrew my trellis) and left me with a very nice first years crop. Good luck to you this summer

 

[AnimalHouseBrewery]

Thanks for the info JP, a few followup questions.

When did you put them out?
Do you have any pictures of your trellis/mound setup?
What type of fertilizer did you use?

 

[JPFuller]

At work so I have no photos but as far as when I planted them if you were here you might remember we had some unseasonably warm weather in March. Put them in the ground and then some cold weather came back and I thought they would die. They didn't, although I have no way of saying if rhizomes would have been as tough.

My trellis is two 10 foot lengths of 3/4 pipe with about 30 inches sunk into quickcrete. So may 17 and half foot tall. At the top of the posts I have a tee fitting which I suspended my horizontal lines from, and from these the vertical lines were tied up to give the bines something to climb.

I read and reread this forum a bunch of times and what I did (which seemed to work) was to NOT overwater the crowns, expecially in the beginning when they have a lot less demand, and for fertilizer I used a judicious amount of a higher nitrogen type.

There are many good gardeners on here that could be much more specific, but basically, I let nature take its course and could not have been happier. I bet you will do fine also.

 

[AnimalHouseBrewery]

Anyone in the NW Chicago suburbs planning to do some pruning and willing to share some rhizomes?