Friday, September 26, 2008

Hop Harvest

I started out this spring with 5 hop rhizomes in pots, and in May moved them over to my garden. Over the summer, I added onto existing garden trellises and let the bines just grow. I only got a couple of bines out of the Willamette and Cascade. The Mt. Hood, Magnum, and Zeus bines seemed to grow the best. However, only the Zeus bines bore any hops this year.


This is before I dried them. Afterwards, I was able to stuff them into two quart-sized bags and stick them in the freezer. I need to get a scale and weigh them. I'm guessing, if I'm lucky, I got 2 ounces. However, all I'm hoping for is at least 0.66 ounces, so I can make my Jinx clone I talked about last week.

2 comments:

billvelek said...

What is your latitude? I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but if that's all the cones you were able to harvest from five plants -- even first year plants -- then there is something wrong. If your latitude is too low ... (the recommended range for growing hops is 35 to 55 degrees), ... then your length of daylight might not be sufficient, and you might need to use supplemental electric lighting. The closer you are to the equator, the shorter your days are; you can grow huge plants, but the length of daylight triggers burring of the bines necessary to produce cones. For a lot of help and info about growing hops, please visit my Yahoo Grow-Hops group, which currently has 2,400 members, most of whom are growing hops. http://www.tinyurl.com/29zr8r

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Jez said...

Thanks, Bill.