New house, new Hops! [pics]

[andybiochem]

Hi,

SWMBO and I moved into our new house late last year, and now the frost is behind us I've started planting out.

I've got Cascade and EKG on the go...


I'll be growing the hops in a tub


Added a couple of cord anchor points to the side of the house


Tied up some string


Put a tank fitting on one side of the tub as an overflow


Pebbles in the bottom of the tub. This will allow water to collect at the bottome of the tub,
acting as a reservoir to keep a constant supply of water for the hops.
The white pipe will be used to check the water level in the bottom of the tub, and allow me to drain
it for whatever reason.


Added soil


Tied the cord to the tub handles. I created a tensioning system on the cord - two butterfly knots on the bight,
connected with a cable tie. If ever the cord loses tension, I will be able to adjust it with the cable tie.


Ready for the hops!

EKG
The rhizomes for the ekg were recovered from my hydroponic hop experiment.
Surprised they survived all this time! I've not watered them once in 2.5 years

Picked out some nodules that were still alive, and replanted them




Cascade
Supplied by a very generous and helpful member of this forum! Many thanks!


Planted in the soil, and then wound clockwise around the cord


Cut some holes in the lid to allow the hops to grow through, but keep the rain
from leeching the soil


Done!

[orlando]

I am so jealous

[jimp2003]

Nice! Where did you get th tub?

[WishboneBrewery]

Nice work, I was thinking of planting some in a big tub like that, I'm just not too sure where yet.

[andybiochem]

Gah! Bit of a disaster! The strong winds this weekend have bustled my cascade hops about so much that it has bent the stems on all three shoots.
I'm pretty sure this will kill off the bines that have grown so far. I'll have to wait for new shoots to appear.

In hindsight, I should have tied the bines to the white cord so they didn't get blown around.

Oh well! Cheering myself up by brewing a centennial pale ale.

Nice! Where did you get th tub?

The tub was from B&Q and was £30 I think. I was loathed to spend that much on a tub, so I shopped around a bit. Couldn't find anything even close to the B&Q one (in terms of size, price, and toughness) so I gave in and bought it. Really very happy with it tho.

[andybiochem]

Update.. 2 months, 1 week, & 1 day later...

How the tide has changed! The cascade plant (on the left) was stopped dead in its tracks by the wind snapping the bines. I was pretty disappointed, so I added a frame/mesh to support the bines as the make their way up to the cord.

This has worked out really well for the EKG's (on the right), there are 3 main bines now running up the cord at a good rate:


The cascade has really suffered though - I presume due to poor weather - and I had feared the worst for the roots. But now that things are picking up a bit, a new shoot has appeared and is s-l-o-w-l-y trying to catch up with the goldings:


Unfortunately, due to bad planning when I plated the hops, the left half of the box only gets sun for a few hours per day, whilst the right half gets probably twice as much (due to shadows from the conservatory). Had I known/predicted this beforehand I would have put the cascade on the right to catch more sun.

I think once it gets some good leaves going it'll catch up ok.

[beer gut]

Hi do you have issues with snails damaging the hops? If so I would strongly suggest using copper tape. I use this on all of my veg beds, the snails can't cross the copper tape because they get a small electric shock, it's like us chewing on tin foil with are fillings OUCH!!!!. I hope this is of some help.

[andybiochem]

2 months 3 weeks

The EKG reached the top of the cord now, so I clipped the growing tip off the main bine (there are two others trying to catch up).


The wall is south-facing, and what with the hot weather recently, some of the leaves are showing scorching.

[andybiochem]

Right, here's how this year's hops turned out....it's a bit of a sorry tale though

Got really good growth from the Goldings, lots of hops formed at the top of the bine - some 2m + off the floor.


When it looked like the hops were ready, I cut the bine down completely to harvest the cones:


Drying out:


Got around 400g of wet hops, which dried out to roughly 80g dry hops:


But, here's the kick in the teeth: they're really not nice smelling at all! They have that awful onion/garlic aroma that wild hops tend to have

Dont know what happened here, as the roots are the same as I planted for my Hydroponic Hop Experiment a few years back - and the hops from then were awesome!

My bet is that the conditions weren't right for the plant? The wall is directly south-facing and the plant took a bit of a battering from wind too - quite a few hops were battered and scorched.

I really don't know if I'll be brewing with these at all. Pah!

Now the Cascade plant...


...hardly any growth at all. As I said in an earlier post, even though the cascade are in the same pot as the goldings, this side of the pot doesn't get as much sun - it catches the shade from our conservatory.

It's a real pity, as the plant started out really well when I first planted the roots in April:


I expect the plant didn't like being potted on outside. Hopefully, I'll have much better growth next year, but I'm a bit worried that the roots might not survive the winter with having poor growth this year...and being situated in a pot above ground where frost might be more severe.

I might have a bit of a dig and see how the roots have progressed, and maybe bring a root cutting indoors for the winter just in case.

A bit disappointed really, but things are going to be much better next year - I have big plans and have ordered some rhizomes already. I'm going to have a mix of soil-grown and hydroponic hops, some from seeds taken from bought hops, some from cuttings of wild hops - it's going to be ace!

Thanks for reading!

[YeastWhisperer]

We have the exact opposite problem in the United States. Goldings is the pain in the backside to grow in many states. Cascade is the easiest and most forgiving hop cultivar to grow in the United States.

[boingy]

Stick with the cascade. Mine is rampant and set to yield a kilo or so of cones when I harvest them in a week or so. The top half of the plant is almost entirely cones with hardly any leaves. Some leaves are scorched, some are snail-eaten but there's no doubt that hops prefer to be in the soil rather than a pot, even if the pot is higher tech than normal . Their roots can go down 2 to 4 metres if they get the chance. Not that they'll manage that here. A couple of foot down they'll have hit solid rock hehe.

Leave the cascade in place, get some mulch over the top of it and consider sheltering the pot by placing other pots in front of it to protect it from frost.

[andybiochem]

Stick with the cascade. Mine is rampant and set to yield a kilo or so of cones when I harvest them in a week or so. The top half of the plant is almost entirely cones with hardly any leaves. Some leaves are scorched, some are snail-eaten but there's no doubt that hops prefer to be in the soil rather than a pot, even if the pot is higher tech than normal . Their roots can go down 2 to 4 metres if they get the chance. Not that they'll manage that here. A couple of foot down they'll have hit solid rock hehe.

Leave the cascade in place, get some mulch over the top of it and consider sheltering the pot by placing other pots in front of it to protect it from frost.

He he! I expect you're probably right, the ground is likely to be the best place for them.

My only worry here is that SWMBO and I are planning on renovating the garden, so I can't really commit to putting hops in the ground yet. Also, I've got planned at least 5 different varieties for next year, but I don't know how they'll turn out so I'd hoped to get at least one year's growth from them as potted plants. I wouldn't want to battle with a persistent grounded-hop plant if I don't like the hops it produces.

Once I'm happy with my plants I'll put them in the ground.