Hops were planted on May 13. I mixed up some top soil, mulch, peat moss and made it up into four mounds. Each mound contained one rhizome. The four I planted were, fuggle, chinook, cascade, and centennial. This picture is just after planting.
Hops require vertical growing so I began construction of my 'hop hut'. My goal was to create an 8'x8'x8' cube which started with posts. Then I added rails across the top.
By May 21, the first bines were making their appearance. Yes it is bines not vines....
By June 14, I had strung the lines for bines to climb on and climbing they were. (cascades are on the left, centennial on the right)
By then end of June the cascades and chinooks had made it to the top of the rails so it was time to put the roof on the hut. (June 29)
By mid August the bines had run out of growth room and cones were filling in nicely. The first is a close up of a hop cone. The second shot is a cluster of cascade cones.
I harvested the chinooks first on August 18, and the cascades on the 19th and here are the harvests.
After about 24hrs of drying I ended up with about 1 oz of chinook and 2.5 oz of cascades. I had to dry them outside because they smelled so I created a cover for the dehydrator.
You may be wondering what happened to the fuggle and centennial. They are still growing with about ten cones from each so not enough to really harvest. Next year there should be something to talk about for this year I did better than I thought....
