Growing Hops In 1/2 Wine Barrels 2010/2011

[Malted]

I am just detailing what I did and what I think about it so far; what I say may not be correct. I'd appreciate someone telling me if I am wrong on anything, but please give useful details.

I'm only a first timer and have yet to harvest my hops. I suppose it is a bit of a blog for those considering starting in the hop game.
Make up your own minds if you think it is 'advice'.


PART 1:

So in winter 2010 I bought some rhizomes from Ebay. I didn't have any hops to participate in a hop swap but later realised that some folks will help you out anyway. Some folks will give you a rhizome for free if you send them a self addressed and stamped mail satchel. They don't advertise this, it comes up more through discussion.

I did not even know what a hop rhizome looked like.
When it arrived it was in a mail satchel in a bag with some damp coir (innert coconut fibres sorta stuff). I kept them in the fridge until I was ready to plant them out. Apparently this is fine as long as they don't dry out or go mouldy and can be kept for a long period in this way.

I bought a Chinook rhizome, Pride of Ringwood

Czech Saaz And a Hersbrucker rhizome.

These costs me about $25 each including postage.

I went for two higher Alpha Acid varieties and two 'Aroma' varieties. I also juggled this with what could potentially grow well, their potential flavours and what sort of hops would suit the beers that I like.
Did I make the right choices? I don't know, time will tell.

Apparently home grown hops can/will have varying Alpha Acid levels and flavour characteristics to those of the commercial ones. Apparently home grown hops will basically have an unknown Alpha Acid level and some people reccommend that you use bought hops for bittering and your home grown hops only for Aroma. I have also heard people say that's codswhallop and there are ways around it. There is more to the story than that and I don't want to start such an argument here. If you want to know more, use the search funtion.

I didn't think that I had room in my garden to plant them into the soil directly so I bought some half wine barrels to put them in (about $39 each in Adelaide). I then took a trailer to a garden supplies place and got 3/4 of a cubic meter of potting mix to fill them. I drilled 1 inch drainage holes in the pots (kept the shavings because it smelled good for smoking meats on the BBQ!), shoved in a good amount of shade cloth on top of the holes, bolted some trellis uprights to the end pots and then filled with the potting mix. I also sat the pots up on pavers so that the bottom of the pots would not stay wet/rot/harbour too many bugs.

Some thoughts on this.
Planting location: I put the two Aroma varieties (Saaz, Hersbrucker) in the pots to the right so that they would get a bit of shade from the tree behind them (the sun goes down over that way). I thought lower alpha, European style varieties might be a bit 'softer'.
Drainage: I think I drilled too many drainage holes in the pots as I also set up a dripper irrigation system along the fence but the water just goes straight through the pots in the immediate area of the dripper. It does not appear to wet up the whole pot. But this may just be the nature of the potting mix. It seems to be necessary to water them with a hose every two days, every day when it is hot.
Potting mix: I think the potting mix I got needed a bit of clay? It basically appears to be compost/vegetative material/wood chips and sand; it is black in colour. It seems to drain a bit too freely. With all of the woodchips in it, it might have low nitrogen availability? I suspected that it may drain too well and therefore mixed water crystals in with it.



I planted my rhizomes 3 days before Spring started (29th August 2010). By the end of September 2010 they were poking their bines up.

This was when the problems started/ my obsession kicked in.

"Ohh the leaves don't look healthy. What will I do. We'll all be runied!":

"And bloody catepillars are munching on them. The flammin mongrels!"

Some thoughts on this:
Catepillars: Twice daily inspections of the plants allows you to find most of the catepillars to pull them off and stomp them. I bought some catepillar viral spray stuff but did not end up using it. They became less in number once it warmed up a bit. The local birds may have also discovered the catepillars too as I see the sparrows etc on the bines and looking about. I had a few spiders here and there on the bines but they didn't seem to be much help.
Sick leaves: I was using slow release fertiliser granules and they didn't seem to cut it. I did not check the pH of the potting mix. They seem to be happy as Larry now that I am using a fortnighlty watering with a liquid seaweed/fish fertiliser.
Companion planting: I planted marigolds in the pots with them because they seem to be a good all round companion plant for most things and will attract beneficial bugs. They also added a bit of colour to the pots.

 

[Malted]

PART 2:

By mid-October they were coming along nicely and shortly after were growing 2-3 inches per day. They did not all grow uniformly. For instance the Chinook came up, looked like a bush and didn't really grow bines upwards for quite some time. You can see the difference in growth below (Chinook not visible to left, PoR centre and Saaz right)

Once the bines got to the top of the trellis quite a few growing tips got snapped off by wind or birds or falling sticks. I was upset by this. Eventually there were plenty of lateral shoots that took their place and continued the march onwards and upwards.

My next daily thing became climbing on top of the pots to train the growing tips and laterals. They often tried to take off over my neighbours shade structre and up and away into his tree. (The tree got a healthy cutback (several times) with a saw from my side of the fence). I kept training the free laterals onto adjacent vertical strings and once to the top I just kept training everything into a bit of a jumble.

Towards the end of December/early January, the Chinook decided to start growing as it was still lagging behind the others. Photo below of Chinook 07th January 2011.

Whilst most bines were thin (left - below) the Chinook bines were quite robust (right - below) - once they took off in January. You can see in the above picture that several have wound around each other right at the top and are able to support themselves above the cables.

25 days of growth. The Chinook was looking like this. (07 Jan left, 01 Feb right)

Some thoughts on this:
Height of trellis: The trellis is a bit over two meters above the rim of the pots. It is certainly not high enough for the hops, they'd love to go much higher. I have just had to keep training the growing tips into a jumble. I left it to this height because it is about as far as I can go without a ladder or some sort of device/arrangement to lower the hops. That and I was limited in this space by the neighbours tree. The trellis uprights, bracing, cables and vertical strings all seem to be functioning very well.
Potash: I have been applying potash at about half a handfull dribbled onto the pot surface. The first time was just before I saw flower spikes, a while after and just recently. Apparently potash is suppossed to encourage flower development. Maybe it did? What it also seemed to do at this application rate was to burn off the lower & older leaves (note this in the photo above).


By the 7th January 2011 they (except the Chinook) had flower spikes forming. Hersbrucker below.

Then the Chinook pulled its finger out later in January and stormed ahead (that is my finger in the picture BTW). Feb 1st 2011 it was looking like this:

Maybe the potash helped to produce a lot of flowers, I don't know. You can see that there are mobs of them. They are all in various stages ranging from spikes to those about 3cm long. I swear there were no flowers at all just over a week ago (just spikes). You can see my 'Jumble training' in the phot above left.

Some thoughts on this:
Variability: The four varieites I have are all growing differently and at different rates. My hops have been growing differently to other's in Adelaide. Other folks around the country have theirs growing differently and at differing rates. Some have begun harvesting ripened flowers by Feb, some folks are still waiting for flower spikes. It seems like there is a LOT of variability. I couldn't say what is normal growth for this time of year (obviously since I am a first timer) but i reckon most folks could only say what is normal for them, as this is probably different even to the bloke next door.
Paying for rhizomes: No I do not regret having done so. I am led to believe that if you get free rhizomes etc they may be small and most would not expect to get a harvest of usable flowers in their first year of planting. With the excitement of 'your first hops' I reckon it is a good idea to be able to get some in the first year of planting at your place (unless of course you are a patient horticulturalist). Having said I am pro-buying, maybe you'll get lucky with a big freebie?
Planting in pots: All up I reckon, and what I have read, planting rhizomes directly into the ground is going to be better than in pots. Had I of done that I am sure I would have had less nutrient issues and would not have had to water them every second day, maybe the dripper system would have worked too. Yes the ground would have been better but pots so far have seemed to work reasonably well for me in my garden situation.

 

[bignath]

Malted, that is simply awesome man!

I hope to be in a situation this year or next to start growing my own too, and this post will serve me as a bit of a how to guide....

Fantastic work mate.

Nath

 

[Malted]

Some more stuff.

Labelling: Note in the photos of the rhizomes that there are aluminium labels that were inscribed and tied to them (provided by the vendor of the rhizomes). I took these labels and nailed them to the fence behind the corresponding variety. Particularly if you have your rhizomes in smaller, moveable pots, attach such a label (or better) to the pot. I have read of people who have lost labels/they have faded/come off and they can't remember what varieity each plant is. You don't want hop plants and flowers that you can't indentify or can't remember what variety they are, securely attach a bloody good label no matter where they are planted.

Winding around strings: Wind the bines around the upright strings in a clockwise manner. But from looking down or looking up?
You can see from the pictures of the bines with the pencils. It is if you were looking from the sky down to the ground. Don't fret, the bines curl around by themselves and will show you which way they want to go.

 

[bignath]

Labelling: Note in the photos of the rhizomes that there are aluminium labels that were inscribed and tied to them (provided by the vendor of the rhizomes). I took these labels and nailed them to the fence behind the corresponding variety. Particularly if you have your rhizomes in smaller, moveable pots, attach such a label (or better) to the pot. I have read of people who have lost labels/they have faded/come off and they can't remember what varieity each plant is. You don't want hop plants and flowers that you can't indentify or can't remember what variety they are, securely attach a bloody good label no matter where they are planted.

very good point.

wouldn't be good to have used your home grown hops to brew and got 'em mixed up.

hmmmm, 15g of Saaz to bitter, 2g/L of chinook for flavour/aroma!

Nath

 

[cdbrown]

very good point.

wouldn't be good to have used your home grown hops to brew and got 'em mixed up.

hmmmm, 15g of Saaz to bitter, 2g/L of chinook for flavour/aroma!

Nath

I'll be in this situation, 4 different rhizomes 3 of them the label got wet and couldn't be read, then I made the mistake of not making note of the one that was labelled! :unsure: Will be interesting to try and work out which is which - PoR, Tett, EKG, Cluster

 

[Lecterfan]

very good point.

wouldn't be good to have used your home grown hops to brew and got 'em mixed up.

Hmmm...and don't plant too close together - my hersbrucker and cascade have got fairly well intertwined at the top of them, so I expect at least one batch to have a slightly odd aroma to it as I'm buggered if I am going to try and work out which is which come harvest time haha. 3m away the cascade and chinook have got a slight tangle, but they'll be used together a fair bit anyway so who cares?

Nice work Malted, good post.

 

[insane_rosenberg]

Top guide Malted.

I've tracked the topic so I'll be able to come back to it when it's time for planting!

 

[Bizier]

Nice work there for sure. Yep, hops really want to keep going up. I would be interested how high they would actually go if you gave them perfect growing conditions.

 

[ploto]

Brilliant post

I had been under the impression that hop vines did not like being planted in pots, but clearly this is not the case. I hope to try my hand at growing some in a planter trough this year and will definitely be coming back to this thread for ideas & inspiration. Cheers!

 

[Malted]

Update: Mid-June 2011

All of my hops' leaves have turned yellow and dropped off and the bines have withered. It depends on where you are as to when this will happen. A fellow up in the hills had his bines all yellowed and starting to drop their leaves whilst mine were still green; the hills are cooler than down here by the coast.

Here's the same Chinook that has been featured previously.

Interestingly, I had a play around with taking some cuttings and just about all of them (only 1 is not) are still green whilst the 'parent' or donor plants are all withered.
Here is one I took from the Hersbrucker:

The darker patch to the right is where I dug up the other cutting that was the only withered one (I have about a dozen saaz cuttings and they are ALL green). Since the cutting was withered, I thought I'd dig it up for a look and store it in the fridge (until spring) to stop it rotting:

It was the least 'robust' of all the cuttings but you can see it has some healthy shoot development and should fire up nicely. This leads onto a discussion of HOW I took the cuttings:

How I took some cuttings
It may not be the best method, and there are plenty of other ways of doing it but this is what I think worked for me.

I had no success putting cuttings straight into the dirt. I took a heap of Hersbrucker cuttings and only two took. What method I did however have good/best success with was as as below. (It is sort of like proofing the cuttings before putting them in dirt).

When collecting cuttings from the plants, have a bucket/s of water to put them straight into.
Cut a piece a bine into a length with three or four leaf pairs.
Cut off lower two leaf pairs about 5mm from stem.
Dip this cut end into some root growth hormone powder and shake off excess. This is not needed, BUT I found I had a lot more rootlets growing along the cutting (from the cut end, nodes and in between) than without the powder (rootlets on the cut end and at the nodes if you're lucky).
Bung a whole heap of these into a glass of water with the remaining leaves above the water level.
Leave on a window sill (top up water as necessary) or other sunny spot until lots of white rootlets are visible, then plant out into pots etc...

And that is how you get some cuttings as in the two pictures above. Note: these were taken late in the season, in Autum I think. They probably would have gone better if I started earlier but I was trialling the 'methods'.

 

[Newbee(r)]

I must admit I have had mixed results in barrels compared to the ground. The reason for this is I think is keeping the roots wet - and they LOVE to stretch out under the ground - temp may also come into play.

My top tips - in the ground if you can, full sun, plenty of moisture - generous dose of mushroom compost or similar good organic material. Keep on top (read trim) the runners or they will put their efforts into running rather than producing. The EK goldings in the first pic attached gave me 2 1/2 pounds of hops in its second season.

 

[Yob]

if ever you want to dispose of any of those rhyzomes mate (cough... chinook) let me know, Ive got a spot in the new backyard im sure will make it happy

stirling work

love those barrels too