Hop Growing 2014

[swerv271]

This is my first year growing hops and I have a challenger hops.

I came out the house the other day and saw,

With



Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these caterpillars? So they don't eat more leaves?

[YeastWhisperer]

BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) is the preferred organic caterpillar killer. Pyrethrum is an organic insecticide that is derived from chrysanthemum. Azadirachtin is the insecticidal component of neem oil. Clarified neem oil is raw neem oil with the azadirachtin removed. Clarified neem oil is a good fungicide and miticide, but it is next to worthless as an general insecticide. Azadirachtin has to be special ordered here in the U.S. because it is not carried by home and garden centers. I ordered a product called Safer BioNeem. If you need something to buy you time until you can locate a stronger insecticide, a couple of drops of liquid dish washing detergent mixed into a gallon of water and sprayed on the plants should slow down the caterpillars.

[YeastWhisperer]

duplicate post please remove

[scuppeteer]

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these caterpillars? So they don't eat more leaves?

If you can bare it, please leave them be. That is a Comma Butterfly caterpillar and they favour hops, so as you can appreciate are becoming quite rare. I have them every year and let them carry on because as far as I can see they do not affect the crop anyway.

[YeastWhisperer]

Comma butterflies are not rare in the U.S. We refer to their larva as "hop merchant" caterpillars. They appeared in my hop yard when I was waging chemical (azadirachtin and pyrethrum) warfare on Japanese Beetles. I waged biological warfare against the hop merchant caterpillars, which is why I know that BT is effective against those defoliators.

[andybiochem]

Cold this morning, my car said it was 7 degrees. Are our hops doomed this year?

[seymour]

Cold this morning, my car said it was 7 degrees. Are our hops doomed this year?

Probably not, hops are extremely resilient weeds. We're having the opposite problem over here: 100ºF predicted for the next week. I'm afraid mine are gonna be scorched beyond use.

[jmc]

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these caterpillars? So they don't eat more leaves?

If you can bare it, please leave them be. That is a Comma Butterfly caterpillar and they favour hops, so as you can appreciate are becoming quite rare. I have them every year and let them carry on because as far as I can see they do not affect the crop anyway.

Thanks for the info scuppeteer.
I'd wondered what they were as I'd not seen them before in the garden.

I noticed quite a few of these Comma butterflies

on my Cobb Golding plant which now has many leaves looking like lace doilies.

However vast majority of leaves are mostly OK, so not worried that they've had their share.

[scuppeteer]

Cold this morning, my car said it was 7 degrees. Are our hops doomed this year?

Nope. Down here that sort of temperature at this time of year (albeit a week or 2 early) is rurally referred to as "a proper picking morning". When you're on the farm at 7am and freezing your bits off, by morning tea you can be quite often sweating your tits off!
It can often be the brightest of mornings with not a cloud to be seen, but the heavy dew in the gardens usually means you get a shower anyway. I just love it.

[scuppeteer]

However vast majority of leaves are mostly OK, so not worried that they've had their share.

Eco growing.

The only issue I ever have with spraying pests is that you can't always be sure of not killing Ladybugs as well. They are the best deterrent for aphid which can really make a mess of your plants. I know commercial growers spray but its their livelihood, a few hops in the back garden is just a bit of fun.

[jmc]

However vast majority of leaves are mostly OK, so not worried that they've had their share.

Eco growing.

The only issue I ever have with spraying pests is that you can't always be sure of not killing Ladybugs as well. They are the best deterrent for aphid which can really make a mess of your plants. I know commercial growers spray but its their livelihood, a few hops in the back garden is just a bit of fun.

Cheers. Last year made me cautious about spraying.
I had lots more aphids so made up a spray using quassia wood chips, garlic and soap solution.
It reduced the amount of aphids, but as I did it in a hot spell I ended up scorching the plants so it was unproductive.
I subsequently read that spraying with soap when its hot can damage leaves as it bungs up pores used for transpiration.

This year I've left them alone and had some aphids but also lots of ladybirds / larvae too so they're looking better.

[Padalac]

my challenger plant, getting closer to picking time

[phatboytall]

Picked my 3rd year cascade last night (I have split it over the years into 3 and then 6 plants/locations), I did 1/5th of it and got 600grams! and that was leaving lots behind i couldnt be bothered with. Very impressed

Whats the longest you can realistically leave them on the bine and start picking them? Stop before when they start going yellow?

Just not sure how i'm going to get time or capacity to use them all!

[scuppeteer]

Picked my 3rd year cascade last night (I have split it over the years into 3 and then 6 plants/locations), I did 1/5th of it and got 600grams! and that was leaving lots behind i couldnt be bothered with. Very impressed

Whats the longest you can realistically leave them on the bine and start picking them? Stop before when they start going yellow?

Just not sure how i'm going to get time or capacity to use them all!

Is that 600g green or dried? As when fully dry they should be 1/4 - 1/5 of the wet weight, so only enough for 1 brew really.

There is a certain amount of research into leaving them until they have "gone over" or slightly over ripe, the thinking is that the oil contents are higher at this stage. When they start to brown up they are fully ripe so you may have another few days yet to harvest. You could get family and friends to help pick and supply them with beer as a trade for their labour.
If you have facility to dry them all (airing cupboard/conservatory/greenhouse) then you have hops for as many brews as your harvest. Shame to waste them.

[YeastWhisperer]

I harvested my first-year Wye Challenger and first-year Cascade hills yesterday. Wye Challenger grew unbelievably well in Maryland. My two first-year Wye Challenger hills yielded a whopping 51 ounces of wet cones in addition to sterile male flowers. That’s an all-time record for a first growing season for me. My two first-year Cascade hills yielded 26 ounces of wet cones.


Wye Challenger cones in a 5-gallon (19L) bucket




Many of the Challenger cones were over 50mm long (the ruler is divided into inches and fractions of an inch)

Wow! You win on the first harvest.

How's the Lupulin look and the aroma's?

Well, my suspicions have been confirmed. The hop culitivar that I acquired as Wye Challenger is not Wye Challenger. From the wrong bine color to both hills going monoecious (developing both sex organs) to the outsize first-year harvest, evidence that the cultivar was not Wye Challenger built throughout the summer. An e-mail/photo exchange with Dr. Peter Darby of Wye Hops pretty much confirmed that the hills are not Wye Challenger. An e-mail exchange with the manager of the USDA clonal repository in Corvallis, Oregon revealed that they have two accessions named Wye Challenger (one accession was received indirectly via a European country). The USDA could not confirm if either of the accessions had the correct bine color to be Wye Challenger due to the fact that both hills had been cut back; therefore, I am going to have to wait until next year to receive my answer.

With that said, the $1M question in my mind was, what did not I grow? Well, I received my results from Alpha Analytics (a division of Hopunion) today, and the numbers pretty much confirm my suspicions that the plants are mispropagated/mislabeled CTZ (or at least a closely-related cultivar). I have linked sanitized versions of the reports below (I removed my surname, the lab manager's name and signature, and the sample ID from the reports). These results should put to rest the idea that homegrown hops are inferior to commercially-grown hops. It is a good thing that I kept seeing red flags all summer because Wye Challenger has an average alpha acid rating of approximately 8%.

Summary Report




Oil Analysis