Hops are back again....

[yeast_slurry_speech]

Some hops pics for you all.


Below is a fuzzy picture of my new cascade plant. My Cascade last year met an early death in a storm. A club member was nice enough to give me a cutting off of his Cascade plant. I'm starting this one in a pot in case there's a spring frost.





Below is a picture of my golding hops. They are doing quite well already.




Below is a fairly fuzzy picture of my fuggle plant. It has just barely broken the surface of the soil.




Below is a picture of my Mt. Hood hop plant. This guy's already 8" tall. He's going to harvest awesome this year.




Below is a pic one of my hop trellis. This is for the Golding and Fuggle hops. It's ten feet tall and made out of pvc pipe. The larger pipes are in the ground and the trellis slides into them. This is so I can take the trellis down for the winter.

[endosperm]

These pics are great. I'd love to see how others have built their trellis'. I am going to plant some rhizomes this year for the first time and I am trying to figure out the best way to construct a cheap and easy trellis.

[beer_bear]

Here are the two examples of what I did for the hops. The ones that are running up the tall lines are Cascade and the ones running the fence are hallertau.


These are last years pics. I will have new ones later. They broke ground last weekend and are already 3.5 feet tall. They are now growing almost 6 inches a day. I can't wait for the second year hravest this year.

[Thirsty Mallard]

Looks good. I'm also getting into hops this year. I think I am going to make a hop pole, 20' tall with a guide wire on a pulley system to lower the top of the vine for harvesting. I got the deisgn from the book Brew Ware. If anyone has ever done something like that, I would love to see a picture of it.

[bub]

Thirsty that is what I did... you might want to reconsiter tho... all the hops grow on the arms... the dangly parts so you are better off if you can get them to grow horizontal ala clothesline... If I were to do it over I would put up a 8-10 foot high clothesline and be done with it... YMMV etc.
BUB

[Thirsty Mallard]

Interesting... thanks for the input Bub! I like the idea of the clothesline style... it is much easier to construct. A few questions:

Would you put the hop plant at the base of a support pole and let it grow up that and then along the line, or would you run a guide wire down from the line for the hops to grow up on?

[bub]

Either way... I personally would grow from the end over the support and onto the wire... that's me... Note my setup is currently a pole and "hop tipi" like you suggested... But if I were to do it over I would do the clothesline method... that's kinda what they do in Germany, sortof.
BUB

[beer_bear]

Thirsty, I did the clothes line thing. I ran a guide wire to the ground and let them climb up those to the top. I used 10 foot poles and put them about 18 inches into the ground with concrete in the base. I have had some really heavy winds come through last year with no problems. I used an 8 foot ladder to get to the hops. It works for me. Good luck with what ever you decide.