Hacksaw Hop Growing

Gardening - it's probably my second biggest hobby after homebrewing. The wonderful thing about homebrewing as it has allowed me to blend the two hobbies together in the glorious pursuit of hop growing! I grew hops last year on a homemade trellis in 5 gallon buckets just off the back porch of my apartment. People called me crazy until they had the beer I brewed with the hops that I grew!

Now that I'm a homeowner I had this master plan to grow my hop plants up the posts of the pergola that I built in the back yard. I learned quite a bit... for example - hops don't like to wrap themselves around 4X4 posts very well at all. Halfway through the summer I made the move to some yarn lines dropped from the top.

I'm growing Nugget and Centennial although for the life of I don't know which is which... the labels I put on the buckets fell off during the move and subsequent winter. I may be able to distinguish based on the leaf shapes but I'll probably just take all the hops I can produce and chuck them in an IPA as finishing aroma hops anyway.

I have post left and post right hops as you can see below.

There was supposed to be a third pot with some of the roots I tried to split off - but somewhere between the transplanting from buckets to pots and splitting off of roots and my dog ripping them out of the pots and running around the yard with them like a chew toy - the third pot ended up empty. I can't tell you how embarrassing it was when I watered that pot for a month and nothing sprouted only to find out there was nothing in the pot.

All the crazy things aside I've got fairly healthy plants that are starting to bud. I'm a little behind most other hop growers in my area because of my foibles, but I'm anticipating at least a small harvest this year!

If you ever want to see Down the Hall brewer Jacob cry - just ask him how his hops are growing. It's quite a sad tale that he may share if he can stop tearing up long enough to type out the story :)

--Ben