Hop Crop 2015

Apparently Pennsylvania is a good place to grow hops.  It's pretty far north so you get good sunshine, there is quite a bit of rain, and it doesn't get that hot.

A friend of mine worked with a home brew shop to get some hop rhizomes of a few varieties and I offered to try my hands with one of them.  I will be trying to grow Golding hops.

I decided to go with a raised bed rather than planting in the ground as I didn't really have any good place to put them other than the middle of the lawn.  A raised bed just seemed like an easier way to ensure that the hops wouldn't get disturbed.  I will be using a partially dead tree to support a string for the hops to grow up.

We have a lot deer and squirrel around here so I may end up having my hops eaten.  Not sure how fond they will be of them.  At this point I've decided to just let nature take it's course so I haven't put up any sort of fence.

Hops are a plant that will come back every year.  I've read that it will take a few years for the plants to get fully established.  This first year likely wont produce a big crop.

I've never been good with plants - they are pretty much non-entities to me and I forget to water them.  I'm pretty enthused about these hops though so hopefully I'll be able to keep them alive and healthy.

Hop Growing Log:

• 4/19/15 - Planting day
• Built a 4x8x1 ft planter box and found a location that gets ~8 hrs of good sun a day (side yard)
• Added 10 2 cu ft bags of Miracle-gro garden soil and 4 50 lb bags of cow manure
• Mixed up the soil and manure and raked it evenly through the bed (mostly filled it)

• Planted two Golding hop rhizomes about 3 feet apart about 1 in deep in the bed.  One of them had the start of a plant coming out and the other had some roots.  I buried them both horizontally

• Watered the entire bed with 2.5 gal of water.  This seemed to only get the surface wet - we are going to get rain tomorrow so I didn't want to over do it.
• Covered the ground with ~1 cu ft of shredded wood mulch
• Put in a couple stakes with rings near the plants to secure the climbing rope to (will take care of the rope after they've grown a bit)
• 4/20/15 - Had quite a bit of rain today.  The planter box is pretty wet but not soaked.  I think the plants will be okay
• 4/28/15 - The top inch or so of soil was pretty dry so I watered with 2.5 gal
• 4/29/15 - A small (less than 1 in) shoot has sprouted on one of the plants.  No sign of anything on the other.
• 5/1/15 - The other hop plant has had a leafless shoot break the surface.
• 5/2/15 - Watered with 2 gal
• 5/3/15 - The first plant to sprout now has a second sprout coming out

5/5/15 - Watered with 2 gal
5/16/15 - I've been watering a couple times per week with about 1.5 gal each time.  The main shoot on one and the only shoot on the other have grown quite a bit in the last couple weeks:

• 5/17/15 - Put up a fence posts and ran twine down to the hops.  I wrapped top bit of hops around the hops clockwise to train them to climb.
• 5/26/15 - Hop plants are making their way up the string:

• 6/10/15 - The hops have made their way to the top of the string.  I added another run from the top of the post to to a tree ~20 feet away.  Many of the leave have been eaten by something.  I have found earwigs climbing on the plants so that might have been part of it.  The plants don't seem to be slowed by this too much.
• 6/13/15 - The hops have moved on to the next string.

6/28/15 - The hops are making their way down the string.  They have started to grow side arms.  I trimmed off some of them to try to get the main vine to grow last week but now I'm thinking of just letting nature take it's course.

• 7/12/15 - The two main vines haven't grown a whole lot in the last couple weeks but they have both thrown out quite a few side arms.  I put in a second post and some more climbing lines for the arms.  I've read that this extra growth can reduce the hop production but it sounds like in the first year you need to give them as many leaves as possible to help build up a good root bed for the winter.  My friend (growing Cascade hops) has hop 10 feet tall at this point.  Mine are about 8 feet each.

• 7/26/15 - The hops have been growing pretty vigorously in the last couple weeks but it's all in the side arms.  The two main vines haven't grown much at all.  One of them has started to sprout some flowers on a number of the side arms.  I was starting to wonder if I was going to get any hops this year - it's looking like I'll get some but probably not a lot.

8/9/15 - The middle hop vine has overtaken the two main vines.  Quite a few new buds have formed along this vine.  Some of the first buds have started to form into cones.  All the buds are coming from one of the plants - the other still has none.  I had trimmed most of the lower branches off the one that is growing the buds so maybe that is a contributor to the behavior.  I've got some leaves that are starting to go yellow and brown on me on the main vine but there is some new growth still and a majority of the plant is looking healthy.

• 8/16/15 - The earth in the planter box has settled down quite a bit so I added 150 lbs of composted cow manure in about a 2 inch layer to the box.  This should also give the plant a bit more to eat as it finishes the growing season.
• 9/7/15 - Some of the leaves have started to wilt and fall off.  The hops are probably ready to pick but there are so few of them that I'm thinking it's not worth harvesting this year - I'd probably get about a dozen hops which I'm sure would be much less than 1/4 an oz.

• 10/11/15 - Autumn has arrived and my hops have just about had if for the year.  Many of the leaves have fallen off and the remainder are fading to brown.  It's getting down to the 40s at night now and should be in the 30s later this week.  Getting close to the time where I'll need to trim these down and get them ready for the winter.

• 10/25/15 - We have had a couple freezing nights and the hops have had it.  I have cut them down and added them to my compost pile.  I cut the stems down to about an inch above the soil line.  I then covered the entire bed with 3-4 inches of shredded leaf and grass clipping mulch.  This will hopefully insulate and offer some protection for the plant over the winter (I understand that you want the bed to stay cold over the winter and that the leaves help ensure that).  There were quite a few little buds poking out of the bottom of the stems waiting to form new hop plants next year.

• 1/24/16 - Had a pretty amazing snowstorm blow through and drop ~2 ft of snow on us last night.  This is all I could see of the hop bed from the driveway.  Hope they're okay in there.

• 4/20/16 - 2016 Hop Crop has started to make its appearance

Lessons Learned:

1. I have three fence posts, four lower strings, and three upper strings tied to a tree for the hops to grow up.  Next year I am going to use six posts with one string each so that each hop mound can grow up three strings.
2. The plants grow nicely up the string from the ground to the fence post but were not naturally winding up the original two strings I put up.  I ended up having to wind it every few days to keep the vine on the line.  The third string to the tree seems to be at an elevation where the plant will eventually wind around without assistance but it still takes a few days of growth where it's hanging off the line for that to happen.  I could have tied the strings up much higher in the tree to get an even steeper climb.  I'll plan on doing that next year.
3. I had quite a Japanese beetle issue with these plants.  I may have to try this product for next year.
4. Local mammal populations (deer, squirrel, raccoon, and woodchuck) did not eat my hops which is good news.