grow my own hops

None of the Nugget vines are flowering, but the Cascade vines sure are! I pulled an older, more mature looking cone from one of the vines this weeked and crushed it in my fingers. It’s got that awesome hoppy smell that I love so much. After that, I tore it apart and could see the yellow lupulin inside it. Awesome. I hope I get enough for at least one five gallon batch. The all-Cascade IPA recipe I’ve come up with requires a quarter pound.

Yesterday, when I was out in the hopyard, stripping leaves and wondering if I have powdery mildew, I happened to look up and notice that the bines are starting to flower. Yay!

Some of the vines have reached the top wire of the trellis now. I went ahead and stripped the bottom foot and a half of leaves to help stave off disease.

A couple of the vines are taller than me already!

Only one of the rhizomes didn’t send up any shoots. I might dig it up this weekend and do a “root cause” analysis. GET IT? :P

So it turns out that what I thought was nugget was just some invasive sprouting grass. Damn it. Anyway… I received my replacement rhizomes and put them in the ground last Thursday. They’re already sprouting. For real this time! I’m so excited. Last weekend, I went ahead and tied my coir twine to the top wire of the trellis—two per hilll. They’re wound around the support posts out of the way for now, but all of the ladder work is done. Woohoo!

I attended an all day hop growers seminar in Madison last Saturday, and I’m full of plans! I don’t know if I can afford to buy more rhizomes this year, so I’m going to focus on what I have in the ground, as well as better trellising, better irrigation, and prepping the soil for next years planting. My big worry was how to get a large harvest dried and pelleted without getting a second mortgage, but after talking with people at the seminar I think I’ve got that figured out.

I can’t wait until stuff starts to grow!

One of the Nugget rhizomes is actually sprouting! Wooo! The rest of the Nugget and the Cascade appears to be dead. I’ve ordered new rhizomes to replace the dead ones, and hopefully they should be here in a week or so. It’ll be considerably easier this time, since I can just plunk them in the ground and go.

This warranted its own entry. I bought a drip irrigation kit at Home Depot, and more than half of the 20 included 1gph drip emitters didn’t function correctly. They were like little fountains. I went back to HD and bought a ten-pack of adjustable drip emitters, and I like them a lot better. They have nice 360 degree pattern to them versus the single dribble.

I also wrote the manufacturer a nastygram expressing my displeasure. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get some freebies.

This weekend, I put all the finishing touches on hopyard and planted the rhizomes. They’ve been in the fridge for a while, so I don’t know if they’re still viable or not. If I don’t see anything in a few weeks, this is the time of year to order new rhizomes anyway.

To recap, this weekend, I:

• Strung the top wire across the 4×4 posts so I can tie the choir twine to them ones the vines start growing

• Finished putting down fill soil

• Set up drip irrigation on an automatic timer.

• Planted the rhizomes.