Its been well over a month since my last update. Sorry it took so long but life (or in this case death) sometimes gets in the way. My hops are all doing great with the exception of the Galena. That one seems to be taking its sweet time in growing. That’s OK though, I have a LOT of Galena in the freezer from a bulk buy I did earlier this year. Also since it’s a first year hop, I really shouldn’t expect massive growth as it establishes it’s root system. Of course if I shouldn’t see massive growth until the second or third year, then I’m almost afraid of how much growth I’ll get from the Cascade and the Ultra hops since for a first year hop they’re doing GREAT!.

These pictures were taken on May 23rd. They were taken with the intention of making a post showing how much they had grown since the last update at the end of April. Sadly it never happened and now they’re being dumped into here. As you can see in the pics below, they grew a good bit since the end of April and have started climbing the line nicely. Please note, I didn’t train these at all, they all just sort of fell over onto the lines and started climbing like good little hop plants

The Ultra hops have grown up the line by May 23 2012 to a height of about 4 feet from the ground. The top of the lines are attached to the overhang of my roof and accessible from the upper porch/deck (will make it EASY to harvest).  The Cascade and Galena went into the ground about 2-3 weeks after the Ultra and are of course growing a little slower as seen in the picture of the Galena shown to the left.

Now we’ll fast forward from May 23 2012 to June 9 2012 and you can see that the hops are growing much faster now. The Ultra’s are still in the lead not only in the number of bines but the height of the bines. They are also starting to establish laterals and some burs are seen forming as well.  These pics were taken looking down from the upper deck and can be a little deceiving in the height of the plants. Currently they are about 15 feet from tip to ground.

The Cascade bines are also doing great and are currently about 9-10 feet in length with multiple bines running up the line. The Galena like I said earlier are growing sloooooowly and are currently only  about 3 feet in length and almost not noticeable at all in the pic (left side follow the string down to the ground). There’s still plenty of time left in the growing season and I’m sure they’ll start to take off sooner or later. If they don’t there’s always next year to look forward too.

There’s the update albeit long over due. I’ll start thinking of how I plan to dry the hops once I harvest them and get that in place while I wait for the harvest. I’ll update again at the end of the month if I can, if not then I’ll update again in July!

Prost!
MM

Just a quick update on how my hops are doing. I was able to pick up my last 2 hops rhizomes and got them into the ground last week. Hopefully they’ll be breaking the surface in another week. Now I have 3 ultra/crystal plants going and have planted 1 cascade and 1 galena. I’m not expecting a lot of hops the first year so any that I get will be a welcome bonus.

The Ultra/Crystal hops are taking off. my last update had mentioned that they were alive and had broken ground. as of today they are 6-7.5 inches in height and growing rapidly. IF the weather makes up its mind on if it’s late winter, early spring or early summer I’m sure the plants would be much happier. Here are a few pics to show how they’re growing. I’ll update again as they continue to grow.

Prost
MM

   As promised, I’m documenting my first adventure into growing hops at home. I placed an order through BrewMasters Warehouse for cascade and galena rhizomes. While waiting on those to arrive I was given some rhizomes from a member of my homebrew club. These rhizomes are either Ultra or Crystal. He wasn’t sure and won’t be sure until he digs up his hop yard diagram he made 4 years ago. Both are low alpha hops used in flavoring or finishing of English ales so either way I’m sure they’ll get put to good use in my beers.

Now that I had a few rhizomes and since my ordered ones should be arriving soon I prepared a couple areas to plant them. I knew I would need an area that would let me run the twine up 15+ feet in order to let the hops have room to climb. Wanting to make this a growing experience that was as cheap as possible buying posts to put into the ground was out of the equation. My house on the other hand, is 3 stories on the front with a deck spanning the entire front on the main level. Placing hooks along the top edge of the deck  gives me almost 20 feet (6 meters) from ground to hook. This should be plenty of room for the hops.

With the height problem resolved, I only needed to clear and prepare the ground. I had 2 areas in mind for the hops to grow. the front of my house is has a E/SE exposure and will get good sun from the morning until mid/late afternoon. That is area 1 where the donated rhizomes are planted. Area 2 where my cascade and galena rhizomes will be planted is on the front corner of the house which has a mostly southern exposure and will receive sunlight from morning until very late afternoon. With the areas picked out I borrowed a tiller from my neighbor and set out to turn some dirt.

Area 1 is a 7’ x 7’ (2.13m x 2.13m) area next to my wife’s rose bush. This bush is MASSIVE and was here long before we bought the house. Last winter I took my pruning shears to the rose bush cutting it back until I was afraid it would not recover. Thankfully it has recovered nicely. By trimming the rose bush I was able to free up an area for hops that was previously covered  up with branches that had thrones big enough to cause arterial bleeding if you weren’t careful. The tiller did a great job of turning over the soil, which to my surprise was a nice dark rich soil. Why would I be surprised? This is Georgia, 99% of the soil here is red clay. I’m talking about the thick sticky red clay that could be shaped, dried painted and fired in a kiln to make just about anything. As a child we used to make bowls or cups and just about anything out of the stuff and let it sit in the hot Georgia sun for a week and it was hard as a rock.

Area 2 is 8’ x 8’ (2.43m x 2.43m) that again surprised me with nice dark dirt instead of red clay. You might think that by now I shouldn’t be surprised but I am. I tilled an area for my wife’s blueberry bushes 20 feet away and it was 100% red clay. It appears that the area right next to my house has some great soil while the rest is crap. This tells me that top soil was put into place on purpose when the house was built. YAY for me! For both area 2 and area 1  (and the wife’s blueberry area) I tilled in some Moo-nure ™ to add some good nutrients to the soil.

With the areas prepared I planted the unknown rhizomes in area 1 and watered them. Now I’ll just have to play the waiting game. Waiting for the remaining rhizomes to arrive and waiting for them to start to sprout. Time for a beer!

Prost!
MM