Pfister Pfarms - A hobby hopyard

[Hello]

Good lord! I couldn't even mow my lawn this weekend and as for growing anything, I'm more of a plant and pray kind of gal. This is impressive indeed. The irrigation setup is truly awesome as well. Nicely done.

 

[tjpfeister]

Did a quick walk through tonight, things are looking good, you can tell that (overnight) the plants have started their growth phase. Pictured here isn't even one of the strongest plants, but it was marked with a twist tie about 27 hours ago. There are many plants that showed even more growth. About 18/66 are now head-height or better.

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[tjpfeister]

Didn't have much time this week to do anything. Rain, rain, rain, then a busy weekend serving homebrew and obeying the SWMBO. I scooted over to the yard tonight for a quick walk around. Plants are looking great, got several pushing 12' at this point.

The plants are largely healthy, but I did notice a familiar pattern on two plants...

In Green Bay, it was Japanese beetles. Down here, in Oshkosh, last year, my problem was these little buggers. They eat just enough of one leaf to kill it, then move onto to another... and another... and another. They hide on the underside, so they can be tricky to find. The sunlight helps find them, then SQUISH!

Only other thing is a minor thing. This is the first year I have ever used coir rope. It seems much more likely to cause this scenario than the sisal rope I used to use. The ends of the bines get caught in a loop of the fiber and are unable to keep growing up.

 

[tjpfeister]

The boy and I squished more caterpillars and freed some tangled bones. Cascades are definitely winning the race now, side arms are coming in. Chinook not far behind. Centennial continue to straggle. Weeds need mowing/tilling.

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[DarkCoder]

The boy and I squished more caterpillars and freed some tangled bones. Cascades are definitely winning the race now, side arms are coming in. Chinook not far behind. Centennial continue to straggle. Weeds need mowing/tilling.

You should sell caterpillars juice to pay some bills from your setup. If you don't use any chemicals, you can advertise it as being bio (always higher price for bio stuff).

 

[tjpfeister]

Squished A LOT of critters tonight, then went to Menard's and bought a load of Sevin.

 

[tjpfeister]

The rain and windy weather had finally let up and last night I got a chance to spray last night. Picked up one of those Harbor Freight 4 gallon backpack sprayers. It did a great job applying my Sevin to all them dirty, dirty caterpillars!

Took a few shots this evening; nary a caterpillar to be seen

Hop Monster wants to hug you!

And this guy will be the first to reach the top, less than 1" away right now. There's another one that will likely hit the top wire tonight too.

Weeds are the next item to contend with, now that the caterpillars are D-E-D dead.

 

[DarkCoder]

Were the caterpillars more present on some varieties than others ?

 

[tjpfeister]

No, equal opportunity leaf munchers it seems

 

[thaymond]

No, equal opportunity leaf munchers it seems

I found that these tiny terrors liked my chinook more than my other three. The bulk of their destruction was found on that one plant. All otgers had only one or two of them on the underside of the leaves. I lost a lot of leaves to them😣, but my foot exacted a swift and terrible revenge👹! Now all is well in the world.

 

[Genacide]

If you did the drip irrigation over would you use the same setup (emitters, line, etc)? I have a 30' foot run with 10 plants on that I'm going to hook up to a rain barrel.

 

[tjpfeister]

Yes, but I would tweak it. In fact, ill be doing it over next spring, when ill drop the lines down, closer to the ground (under 12 inches). I will shift the 1/2" line and add double the emitters, so that it drips on both sides of the plant. And finally, the steel containers will be replaced by plastic so that my filters stop plugging with rust.

 

[tjpfeister]

Some images from around the yard these past few days:

Here's a bine that broke itself because I didn't untangle its tip. This has me questioning the use of coir rope next year:

Considering have some t-shirts made up:

And I've got to get going to work, so I don't have time to make this link into a nice video-link. A sparrow took offense to me being in my field and forced me to shelter between the rows of plants while I filled my water barrel.
https://video-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xpt1/v/t42.1790-2/11681565_10153535509218313_1371425923_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjk4NiwicmxhIjo1MTJ9&rl=986&vabr=548&oh=fd1c4f03b4950407f0bd7fc455ca587e&oe=55955C2F

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Now THAT is pretty. Great photo! I hope you are feeding a few of these pics to the local brewers. They should be chomping at the bit to get those hops.

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[tjpfeister]

Been dry lately, have to run the irrigation nightly. Tonight's count is 16 plants at or over the top wire. Centennial are still weaksauce, but might see a nice little harvest off cascade this season; possibly Chinook.

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[tjpfeister]

It's been 15 days since I last posted... Wow, how small those plants were two weeks ago! I had a baby, a daughter; my first. That's been eating a lot of my time, but the oldest step son and me, we upgraded the irrigation to two emitters per plant. The yard looks quite full, the neighbors are all anxious to talk about it and how they no longer think that I'm crazy. I had one plant inexplicably fail. No signs of topside damage, I suspect something went after the roots. I'll dig it up when I'm sure that the plant is done-done. Found my first cones today, cascades win the race! But Chinook and centennial have plenty of burs and are not far behind

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[sandyeggoxj]

Wow! That looks amazing. And the hops are cool too!

Congrats on the daughter. That is exciting.

Can you imagine your plants next year? They are looking great. I am living vicariously through you. Please keep up the excitement and progress!

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Both the hops and the new daughter look great! Hope you figure out what happpened to the plant.

 

[tjpfeister]

Have cones forming on all three varieties; chinook, cascade, and centennial respectively. Watering daily as the rain keeps going to Minnesota and Illinois. The upside is that has allowed for copious amounts of weeding.

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[BeerFst]

This is incredible! you've had such great success. Youve managed incredible things from your first years, mine have mostly stagnated around 5-6 feet, with one or two that had started to burr up last week. Ive definitely learned some things this season. What you have accomplished is flat out amazing. I still owe you that picture of what wheel pipe is, ha

 

[jkalberer]

I don't mean to tell you how to raise your child, but that good lookin' baby deserves a pair of Babiators! The plants are coming along great, I've been following this one. I hope some day to be able to have a grow of this magnitude. Thanks for the thread, I've really enjoyed it, and congratulations on the new child.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

A fellow homebrewer here on HBT had a onsie made with this logo. Thought I would share it!

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[tjpfeister]

Cones are getting big. Lost a few bines to chaffing in the wind on the lower cable. Fighting draught, keeping those irrigators full is a chore.

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[WilliamSlayer]

Since this is not the first large-scale project for you, but you are now in a new location, I was curious to know what your plan is for harvesting, and drying?

 

[CharlieJ]

I'm Loving the thread. Keep up the good work.... when I move back to Wisconsin I hope to give you some friendly competition errr I mean pick your brain... lol

 

[tjpfeister]

@ William - "they" say that it takes 1 inexperienced man-hour to harvest 1 established plant. These are first years... so I'm hoping a bit less. I intend to sucker, beg, and plead friends and family to come harvest. The top cables drop to simplify collecting the bine. I'll likely throw up one of those collapsible canopies with some folding tables for the crew to pick and pop onto containers. I'll set up a simple screen based oast with 2x4s or something for drying prior to vacuum packaging.

 

[tjpfeister]

Harvest could be any week, or any day now. Probably weeks, let's hope it's a few weeks. Crazy busy lately, the 9yo and I found a little time to start on the hop oast. Wish I had an idea how many 2x2 trays I will need. Guess I'll start with 22 of them and see what happens

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[tjpfeister]

Filled tanks and irrigated tonight as we got screwed out of rain, again. A little sensory testing tells me the cones are a ways off from being ready for harvest. Which is, obviously, a relief as I haven't got the oast finished yet and several other projects demand my immediate attention.

One glaring oversight became clear to me this morning. My casual following of other people's oast builds had me slap together the boxes, as you see them, without thinking. This made the OD 25.5", give or take. This was a problem since my screen is 48" and I meant to lay the boxes side by side, staple the screen down , and cut. Well, the ID is 22ish, so I cut the roll of screen in half with the abrasive chop saw at work. More 2x4s were purchased and I began cutting them tonight. Still scratching my head on best fan type and placement

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[thaymond]

A box fan works great for me. I place mine at the bottom of the past and blow up. You could place one at the bottom and one at the top both blowing in the same direction, that way the air is forced through all layers of the hops.

My oast build is here.

 

[tjpfeister]

Working on completing the oast tonight. Final shot is of my father in the yard last night as the oncoming storm blew the chinooks around. The oast will actually be two separate stacks once I figure out how to mount the box fans

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