Gowanus Brewery

In the same spirit that united me with my Cascade rhizome cutting through the Yahoo! Grow Hops Group, I am attempting to propagate the hop plants in my garden to redistribute to the Yahoo! group and other friends.

The plan is simple. As you can see in the picture, I just took three long planter boxes, filled them with a mix of top soil and compost, and buried two bines in each box. They’ll sit outside all winter under a layer of mulch and next season, when it’s time to cut them up, I’ll unearth them and see what I’ve got.

If you click through on the picture, you’ll get a better view of the actual cuttings. I believe that each point generating leaves will transform into a point generating roots, so that, for every section with sprouting leaves, I’ll have a potential root cutting next year. I guess that I have about 10 cuttings total for each box here, if not more.

The hop plants have been booming!

The one pictured is the Centennial and it’s climbed well above seven feet. The Willamette is only about five feet high now, but it has a lot of, ahem, girth. The Cascade, on the back fence, is going the best, though I have it set up on a T-shaped trellis, so I can’t say how tall it is. As a guess, I’d put it 15 feet, if it were growing straight up.

All of them have at least some burrs that will become hops soon. The Cascade is ahead of the back with a few dozen well-formed hops hanging all over the place. The others not so much, but, hey, that they survived their journey to Brooklyn at all is remarkable.

They may be hard to spot in these pictures, but what you see before you is three sprouted hop rhizomes. That’s right. Despite all the ups and downs, they’re alive!

The two plants on the left are planted on either side of the hop trellis and will eventually grow up twine lines stretched from the deck to the top of the trellis.  The Centennial is the larger of the two and the other is the Willamette.  The plant on the right is the Cascade I received from the Yahoo! Grow-hops Group recently.  It’s the one that survived weeks sitting in a cardboard box during a massive heat wave.  I have it planted in the back of the yard in the center of a fence where, eventually, there will be a section of wood lattice for it to cling to as it grows up.

As you can see, none of them have the benefit of great-looking soil.  All of the soil in this part of Brooklyn is rich in clay and dense, because–and I’m serious now–millions of years ago a glacier removed all of the top soil in its path, revealing the layer of clay-rich soil we have today.  The soil in the back of the yard has, however, been under plastic for over four years, so it actually might be relatively nutrient-rich.  Anyway, we’ve got a compost bin on the way and I should have better soil to work with by mid-summer.

It has been a wild ride getting my hop garden live this season.

Last I reported, I had given up on the first two rhizomes I planted, the Willamette and Centennial. After more than a month, they hadn’t broken ground and, after excavating them, I didn’t see any signs of life in them. I figured they were kaput and my only consolation at the time was that I had won a Cascade rhizome in the Yahoo! Grow-hops Group that was on its way. So much has changed since that update.

The first thing that happened was a total reversal of circumstances. My girlfriend noticed earlier in the week that the Centennial had actually broken ground! It was a huge surprise and made me check out the Willamette too–it appeared to be coming back as well, though it hadn’t actually sprouted yet. The weather has been especially warm lately, so I guess that’s what woke them up. Now I had two viable rhizomes in the ground and a third that was supposed to be on its way. I quickly realized though that it was long overdue. I tracked it online and it turns out that it was delivered weeks prior, despite never reaching my hands.

So, where I once had two dead plants on my hands and one live one on its way, I had two live plants in the ground and one missing in action. I was bummed about missing that delivery, but only until yesterday. My girlfriend had more good news for me. She noticed a weather-beaten box near our neighbor’s trash cans that had my name on it. You can guess what was inside.

I planted the Cascade last night in the best, richest soil we have in the yard. I’m not certain that it survived weeks of rain and 100-degree plus temperatures, but at this point anything’s possible!

I’ve tried to maintain hope that the Willamette and Centennial hops rhizomes I planted in April would eventually take hold and break ground, but it’s time to accept a loss on this one: they’re both officially worm food. On the plus side, the Yahoo! Grow Hops group rhizome exchange has saved the summer with a donated Cascade cutting. Just in time, too.

With only the most basic understanding of growing hops, I can only guess how I killed the first two rhizomes. The mostly likely explanation, assuming they were viable when they arrived in the first place, is that the refrigerator was too cold for storing them prior to planting. New rhizomes are sensitive to cold temperatures and, though the temperature in my fridge is obviously above freezing, if it happened that they were in direct line with circulating cold air, it may have gotten cold enough to cause damage. I may never know.

When the Grow Hops group cutting arrives, I’m going to plant it on one side of the hop trellis. As the first bines appear, I’ll try to train them up both sides of the trellis, at least for the first year, since I won’t have a second rhizome to plant on the other side. It’s late in the season, so I have low expectations. There’s always next year.

Friar Smith was kind enough to address a couple of concerns I had regarding our hop garden and to share some general wisdom, based on his own experiences.

On my hop trellis design:

Your first-year hops will not bush-out much at the top, so being 14″ apart at the top is not an issue for now. Next year, you may want to add some type of divider along the top two to three feet of your trellis to keep the plants apart. Be a ruthless pruner: if you are disciplined and keep your bines limited to 3-4 per plant (that’s so hard when healthy ones pop out!), you will keep the bushing-out to a minimum, limit the expansion of the root mound (read: keep the thing contained and under control), and really increase the amount harvested. I usually let the first 7 or 8 bines grow to about 18 inches, then keep the 4 healthiest.

You should consider installing at least one staked guy-wire perpendicular to the orientation of the hangers at the top to safeguard the pole during windy days.

After-planting tips:

The first sprouts should break ground in 21-28 days, depending on weather.

Rather than participate in the clockwise/counter-clockwise debate, consider first the path of the sun relative to each plant. The tip of the plant will follow the sun and wrap in that manner. If you are unsure, wrap the bine in the way it grows naturally. Fighting it is useless, because they will either unwind themselves or start to grow their own way anyway… which is probably best.

Remember, July is mini-skirt month. Once your plant grows 5-7 feet and starts to send out lateral growth (where the cones will set), thin out the foliage on the bottom four feet of each bine so you just see the twine and bine. This will discourage mildew, aphids, and will focus more of the plant’s energy towards the top section and those precious cones.

The two products below probably can be ordered online, and you might find them at a hardware or nursery that sells organic fertilizer. I’ve never seen these at HD or Lowes. They are simply awesome for hops. Two lupulin-covered thumbs up…

Fish emulsion: Mix one tablespoon in a gallon of water. Apply once each week to the base of each plant until you get lots of burrs (around July 1st). This stuff stinks (it’s ground up fish and fish excrement from hatcheries) and is hard to wash off your hands, so wear some kitchen gloves.

Mor-Bloom: Mix at the same ratio, but start weekly applications around July 1st through harvest. Does not stink!

After-harvest tip:

After your harvest, don’t cut the vines down until a week or so before your first heavy frost, which for the east coast, is probably sometime in October. This will encourage further root growth until the ground freezes. Then cut the bines about knee-height and cover them with compost and leaf litter.

Thank you Friar Smith!