An idiot's guide to growing hops?

[Befuddler]

Next month, I will finally be moving out of my pokey little flat into a pokey little house with a pokey little garden. All pokeyness aside however, said garden is south facing and with just about enough space for a hop plant or two. My main obstacle here is that I don't know the first sodding thing about stuff with petals and leaves and all that. I don't even know how to grow grass.

Sooo... I'm sort of hoping you genial fellows can stack a bit of knowledge in my empty bonce-hole. I need some kind of total brainless mongoloid's guide to sourcing and growing hops, starting with which end of a spade to use and ending with chucking the lovely little sods into my kettle. Please explain this to me like you're explaining relativity to a cat. I'm that clueless.

[Wolfy]

Honestly, hops are essentially weeds, give them some food and enough water and they will not stop growing.
Give them something to climb up and they will reach the top.
Try to pull them out (after they are established) and move/remove them, and you will find just how like weeds they are.

If you have even the most fundamental ability to grow plants you can grow hops without issue, all the rest is just helping you grow them better.

[Befuddler]

What do you feed a plant..? Do they like chips?

If you can't tell yet, I've never grown a plant before. Do I just bung them in the floor and wait? I can't help thinking there must be a bit more to it than that.

[Spud395]

Mine love choclate.

This is what I just done fuddler.
Got my 1st hop plants 2 weeks ago, 3 Cascade and a fuggles.
I find the metal part of the spade works best in the ground, so I used that end to dig a hole for each one!
Big enough hole and almost filled it with compost and manure and chucked the plant on top of that.
Covered the rest with some of the soil I dug out.
Water every evening and sometimes add tomatoe feed.
They seem to be leaping out of it with loads of new growth.

As I say 1st timer and not a gardener at all, but hopefull as hell

[Befuddler]

That sounds simple enough, cheers.

It's going to be the first week of August before I'm moved into the new pad, so obviously I've missed the season this year. Is it worth even planting anything at that point or will it just die over the winter?

[Belto]

Give the Hop roots a good home to live in and it will pay you back.
Provide a framework for it to climb
August planting will give it time to establish for next year.
Grow only three shoots (i.e. cut out the others)
You should get a crop next year.
Problem is how are you going to find what the AA is?

[Befuddler]

Cheers for the tips.

I don't think AA is that important.. I'll take an educated guess once I've brewed with them for the first time.

[L2wis]

My thread might be of some use:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=40908

Don't go to mad with the watering as it might encourage powdery mildew.

[stevetk189]

I find the metal part of the spade works best in the ground, so I used that end to dig a hole for each one!

Nice thread at just the right moment too! I've got a bit of room down the bottom of the garden that I was thinking about growing a few hop plants in. Not just for my own brewing as there are a couple of commercial micro breweries not that far away who I was hoping might possibly purchase 20 or 30 tonnes a year and make me rich beyond my wildes... Oh sorry about that, it happens sometimes.

I know bog all about gardening beyond cutting the grass and I even get that wrong sometimes but I've read so far that certain hops favour acidic soil and other alkaline if that's any additional help.