recommend varieties for me to grow

[Kent88]

I'm thinking about ordering a rhizome or two to plant this spring. I typically make small batches (1 to 3 gallons) of munich malt heavy lagers, and oatmeal or milk stouts. I'm not much for super hoppy IPAs.

I think I'm in growing zone 5, close to the great lakes.

I typically use hallertau for lagers, and nugget for stouts.

Any recommendations for varieties and where they'd be available?

 

[tjmac5071]

Nugget and crystal? All the standard homebrew shops seem to sell them.

 

[porterpounder]

Liberty is a great lager hop that grows really well here in MA. It's a Hallertauer descendant. Probably my most productive hop. Magnum is similar in growing characteristics with much higher alpha.

 

[Ruint]

I have a field that I grow Hallertau in, For their first year they did fairly well. This coming year (2017) season they should be rocking! We will have 8 rows of this at 300 feet long each, set up in "V" trellis design. I can't accurately predict what harvest will bring, but....now you know

If you are wanting to purchase plants, then I recommend that you do a internet search for Great Lakes Hops.

 

[Kent88]

I recommend that you do a internet search for Great Lakes Hops.

Excellent. I couldn't find Hallertau for sale at some of the more popular sites. Much appreciated! Now to pick out a good spot in the yard so I am ready when the snow melts :rockin:

 

[Greatlakeshops]

Check out or latest updated variety descriptions. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7aNkuU_q8iENFRRcGlMdURvWmM

May help you narrow down your search. We also point people to beeradvocate.com to help correlate hop varieties to beer styles.

We also have these same descriptions with each variety we offer on our site! http://www.greatlakeshops.com/shop-now.html

 

[Kent88]

Ordered hops, hallertau and nugget, from @Greatlakeshops right before Easter and they arrived yesterday. While probably not ideal, I am going to keep them in containers this year as I am not yet sure what part of my yard I want them to have.

 

[Ruint]

You might want to get bigger pots, or at least deeper ones Kent!!...or choose where they are going soon! They like to go deep, and while they are young, I think you'll end up stunting their progression somewhat by limiting their growing space. You don't have to have anything elaborate set up the first year, as far as a trellis goes...I can show you a picture of plants I intended to get a spot for....didn't....and they even wintered in those pots and are growing now, but they never got to anywhere near a size that you could harvest hops from...

 

[Kent88]

You might want to get bigger pots, or at least deeper ones Kent!!...or choose where they are going soon! They like to go deep, and while they are young, I think you'll end up stunting their progression somewhat by limiting their growing space.

So from your experience you would say that keeping them in a small container to start with has been detrimental to hops you've grown? Even though it was just for a year they never fully recovered even after you planted them properly? You're pretty confident that lack of space is/was the issue?

I'm reluctant to (or maybe just to lazy and cheap) go and get bigger containers and transplant them again. I originally figured that I would just give them a year to get established in containers before putting them in the ground.

I'd at least like to wait a while for the soil to compact so I can take everything out in one big piece before I mess with another transplant. However, because obviously they are vines, that might be difficult after they get big and start wrapping around something.

 

[Ruint]

I'll take a picture of the plants I still have in pots later today for you, for your own assessment. Detrimental is dependant on your goals of growth...if you would like to harvest some hops this year from those plants, then yes, you'll need to change their current situation. If you just simply want to keep them alive until next year, keep them in those pots. I can show you later this year the difference in plant vitality, but will have to wait until they start the regrowth from being crowned.

 

[Kent88]

@Ruint Goal for this year is to keep them alive. If I get some cones at the end of the year, great. For me a big batch is 3-gallons, and I have a feeling I wont be brewing as frequently this year as the past couple, so I don't anticipate needing many hops from these plants anytime soon.

Detrimental referred to long term health and yield of the plant. I didn't expect much for cones this year, or even next year (after planting it in the yard), but I'm hoping by year 3 I'll have a decent yield.

Would definitely appreciate some pictures.

 

[Ruint]

Hey Kent...not knowing what your goals were kind of lead me wrong. When get new hop plants I all ready know where they're going...apologies for projecting that on you! The picture below are of extra centennial and cascades that were kept in pots, so I could keep them alive until I could find a satisfactory place to put them....long story short....never found the time to find the place...I'll show another picture that will give a good idea where the time went,

 

[Ruint]

Looking at them you can tell they grew some, but nothing to comparison to what we planted in the fields. Pick a spot in the yard, use a 2 x 4 that's 10 feet long and stick it in the ground by the plant. They'll train themselves to that and will provide you a little bit of hops at the end of the season. Or you can look at the potted ones above and see if that is what you want, Their second year growth will be affected by what you choose to do with them.

 

[Ruint]

This was most of the time eater for me last year...same hops, planted in ground though.

 

[crane]

Hey Kent...not knowing what your goals were kind of lead me wrong. When get new hop plants I all ready know where they're going...apologies for projecting that on you! The picture below are of extra centennial and cascades that were kept in pots, so I could keep them alive until I could find a satisfactory place to put them....long story short....never found the time to find the place...I'll show another picture that will give a good idea where the time went,

Ok, I'll play devil's advocate here. Clearly the OPs pots are significantly larger than the ones ruint is showing here. To say that all potted hops plants will grow poorly is not a correct statement. Additionally comparing a hop plant in an extremely undersized pot to a full on hop field is comparing 2 extreme ends of the spectrum.

Take what I have to say with a grain of salt as I am new to growing hops but from the research I have done you need at least a 10 gallon container and something more like 20+ gallons is more ideal. Yes growing in the ground is the best option, but growing in pots can be done. Just Google "potted hops" and you will find several examples of people who have done it successfully. Were their plants as big or yield as much as a 30 foot plant grown in the ground? No, but that doesn't mean they were all epic failures. I found this thread below inspiring to me as I also live in San Diego. He got 7 - gallon size Ziploc bags of hops from a single first year plant. I call that a success.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=571757

 

[Ruint]

Smh...lmao!!! Granted...my pots were smaller....doesn't change the outcome...if you plant in a pot, you will alter the final growth...period. I simply wanted OP to know consequences. We can wait and see what Kent gets for a harvest if he decides to leave them in those pots. I did not need/have to harvest from my pot planted ones...and yes...that is an extreme spread of the spectrum.

 

[Kent88]

Well first I need to get them to survive through the spring, then I'll worry about how much the hops will grow this year. I checked the forecast for the upcoming week just before I ordered and it looked like it was going to be pretty nice, but I'm actually dealing with nights where the temp dips down near freezing. I've put the hops in the garage for a few nights already.

How well can they handle the cold? How cold does it need to be outside before I start wondering if I should put them in the garage?

 

[Ruint]

When the hops first arrived 2 years ago....we were not ready to plant them in the ground. After a week in the planting trays, they were getting pretty tangled up. The decision to separate them from one another was made and we transplanted them to red Dixie cups with a little more potting soil in them. They stayed in those Dixie cups for 4 more weeks, and during that time there were 2 hard frost events. They all survived!! So you don't have to be overly concerned with how you have yours.

 

[Kent88]

I thought I'd update you on how my hops are doing, as they just hit a milestone. I think I've got them sufficiently trained to some twine that leads up to the clothes-line.




So I just put some wire around them to keep away the bunnies. I wish I could keep the ants out, too. The pot with the nugget growing in it is also home to an ant colony now.

Now I'm starting to give some thought to fertilizing. I've been going by what someone did in a youtube video, that dirt is roughly 50/50 topsoil and dairy manure compost with a little bonemeal in there. In the video one guy recommended something called Bio-Bloom, but I think they've changed the formula for that since the video was posted. Any thoughts?

 

[Ruint]

Looking good Kent. I don't believe that having an ant colony in your pot is beneficial...in any way. You can use standard ant killer or seven dust without worry of contaminates, to get rid of them. As far as fertilizer is concerned...you would like to use anything that has a good dose of nitrogen in it, a little potassium, and a little phosphorous. Your run of the mill fertilizers like Miracle grow N-P-K of 10-10-10 could be used...albeit that you'll have an abundance of the P-K left underutilized. I would recommend a blend of N-P-K like 15-2-2, or something close to that. The bloom booster is used to help give the plant more nutrition near the flowering stage and into flower development (building of the laterals and flower/cones), and you could look for other fertilizer that supplies trace elements...like manganese, copper, zinc, and especially boron.

 

[Kent88]

I put some bait stations near the pots to kill the ants. You see how I anchored the twine to the ground and then in the pot (its a little hard to see)? That twine seems to be a favorite path for them to get in and out of the pot, so I have a bait station right down where the twine is anchored to the ground.

Not sure how well that will work, but until you said otherwise I figured that ants weren't that big of a problem, that they might even loosen up the soil a bit. Guess I'll try to kill them. I am trying to grow hops here, not an ant farm.

I've been trying to decipher what people recommend for fertilizer. I think most people say that they want a low amount of phosphorous (which the bonemeal should help provide anyway, right?), but I've been getting the impression that some potassium is good (like maybe more than phosphorous). Nitrogen seems to be the only thing that people agree that the hops need a decent amount of.

A 15-2-2 blend sounds like a pretty safe bet so far.

 

[Kent88]

I just took some pictures so I thought I would provide another update. Since the beginning of June I've given each container some blood meal and some 5-1-1 (about a quart of mixed up fish fertilizer each). Three bines have now made it up to the horizontal clothes-line wire which is a little more than 6' up from the ground, and one of them has already grown on the wire significantly.

I have Rose Chafers hanging out in my yard but I hit them with some Sevin, which seems to have done the trick for now. Am liking the "self-watering" containers, I just fill up the bottom once or twice per day and put a little water on the surface and it works ok so far.

Nugget on the left, Hallertau on the right.