About a year ago (Fall 2020) I took a new job and moved from OH to PA. As part of the move I bought my first house and decided that I wanted to grow hops to compliment my interest in brewing. Research suggested that it took a few years for hops plants to mature so I planted rhizomes this spring even though I will not be brewing immediately. I brewed with several friends in OH that have equipment so I will need to acquire my own setup, probably some time this winter or early 2022. Anyways, I thought I would share my totally novice hops growing experience.
The first beer I ever brewed was an Irish red ale partial extract kit that we called "Fuggin Red Ale" because the hops packed was only marked "fug". I later learned that this was to identify the variety of hops, Fuggle, and thought that this would be a good candidate for my first hops attempt. Fortunately the Fuggle variety is also tolerant of cooler, moister climates which makes it suitable for my current location. I chose to plant six rhizomes near a utility pole for convenience but I may move them to a sunnier spot in the future. I saw lots of different suggestions on planting rhizomes but decided to plant them individually to see how many would sprout. After 3-4 weeks I was very pleased to see that all six had sprouted - this is an example of a young plant on May 23rd.
This image shows all six plants on my makeshift trellis on June 21st. The spacing is probably messed up because I planted them mostly horizontal. Next time I would plant them in a more vertical manner (or perhaps buy plants to give them a head start).
Mature hops can grow 25+ ft but I figured I would be happy if most of the rhizomes sprouted, established some roots, and grew 5-6 ft. As it turns out my ~8 ft trellis was not adequate since the first plant hit the top by June 30th. Next year I will have to design a more elaborate trellis.
By July 16th half of the plants had outgrown the trellis and were making their way up the guy wire.
Since it takes ~3 years for plants to mature I did not expect many, if any, hops this year. To my surprise there were a significant number of hops cones toward the top of the largest plants by July 30th.
Thoughts and observations:
- Some people are very specific about trellis material (coconut hop twine) but I used regular twine and was surprised to see the plants climb the wire rope guys on my utility pole. I will probably use thicker twine next year to support the weight of taller plants and may even experiment with other materials.
- When the plants were young I was concerned that not all of my rhizomes were the same variety because some of them had different shaped leaves. As they grew I noticed that the different leaf shapes even appeared on the same plants.
- There is a lot of guidance on trimming bull shoots (early sprouts) and limiting the number of bines per plant. Since they were new I did not trim any of the early shoots because I did not want to risk killing a plant. Some plants had several shoots from the start but others had one or two early on. I did not limit the number of bines per plant but I may do that in the future.
- One or two of the largest plants are producing a lot of cones while the smallest plants barely got to the top of my trellis and have no cones at all. People say not to expect hops the first year but I may have gotten lucky or the number of plants could be making up for it.
- Hops cones started developing at the top of my tallest plants and seemed to make their way down the plant. I think one of the first flowers may be visible in the 7/16 image and there are still flower buds developing nearly a month later. I am not sure if this is typical or because the plants are immature but it seems unlikely that all of the cones will be ready at the same time.
- i was concerned about the location of the hops being partial sun, but they appear to be doing fine. Perhaps Fuggle are more tolerant of partial sun or they may have grown better in a full sun location.
Does anyone here have experience growing hops?