Hop Growing 2012
Posted on: May 7, 2012
- In: Brewing | Random
- 4 Comments
From memory I think from front to back its Challenger-Fuggle-WGV 🙂 Last year my pathetic piece of string I used between the house & the pole just snapped in the strong winds we had so down came the hops! This year I’ve borrowed the neighbour’s ladders and fixed a strong Rawl Bolt Eye-bolt in the house wall and strung a securely clamped steel cable between pole & house.
I may change tack another year and move these plants round the side of the house into very large planters and attach some more cables from house down to fence so when they hops grow they will form a nice looking covering over the yard at the side and also have a lot of support from strong winds. If I do this I shall probably but a Bramling Cross / Saaz or Hallertau / Cascade in the original spot.
You can just see the wire top right, now firmly anchored to an eye bolt in the house wall:
I’ll leave these a week or so as they are to see which of the new growth starts climbing best before weeding out to keep maybe 4 or 5 strong shoots:
Coir twine, AKA ‘Bean String’ a nice biodegradable climbing frame for hops, hopefully it will be strong enough to support them until they get to the top wire:
Rather than cutting and clamping off the cable at the height of the upstairs windows I’ve taken the cable down the wall to knee-height and looped it over another eye-bolt so I can un-hook and lower the cable down when it comes to harvesting or cutting back the hops:
4 Responses to "Hop Growing 2012"
May 7, 2012 at 9:52 am
I’m hoping these will do better than last year, if the Coir twine doesn’t break it will be a start 🙂
3 | Steve Ellis (@AllGrainBrewing)
May 10, 2012 at 10:09 am
I really like the sunken bench patio area too, looks like a right sun trap. The smell of barbeque smoke, a cool beer in hand and the waft of hop aromas on a summer evening. Lavvvvarley.
May 10, 2012 at 5:43 pm
yep, its small but very good in summer with the sun shining 🙂 We just have a load of work to do on the garden to make it nice.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
May 7, 2012 at 9:47 am
What a great idea, your very own hop sniffing area until brew time