I am going to have a crack at growing hops myself this year once they are available for purchase. I was just reading this article which has what appears to be a good pole design for growing 4 varieties.
Can anyone see any problems with it?
I reckon it looks like a reasonable design to me. Be aware that 13 feet isn't all that much clearance for hops, but with nearly 3 feet between varieties at the top, it should avoid serious tangling.
For my first year (this season just gone), I used two 2.5m wooden poles about 8m apart for mine (dynabolted to the brick wall at each end of my apartment's balcony
). I have 3 slots cut all the way around each pole 20cm apart, so the slots are at about 2400, 2200, 2000mm off the ground. I then run three lengths of twine between the two poles, using the slots to keep the twine from slipping.
At the eastern end, I then put three long stakes in a nice big pot, forming a "tee pee" with the peak near the twine lines. I picked 3 good bines, and trained them onto the three stakes. When they got to the top of the stakes, I trained them onto the three horizontal lines. First year growth put them about 2 metres along the lines (4-4.5m of growth per bine). Next season, I'll be getting myself a POR, and will grow it from the middle of the lines.
While this needs a lot more space than the link you posted, it has lots of advantages: You can reach all of the hops, and can do multiple harvests without messing about with a ladder (my hops became ripe over a period of a month or so); It's a cheaper, and less permanent rig; Finally, you don't lose as much space as you might think - you can still walk around under the lines.
