This past year, I grew hops in containers and had great results
I filmed every step along the way to share with you how to plant rhizomes prepare the soil growing and pruning tips
when in how to harvest and
Curing and storing tips. Be sure to stick around to the end where I share some lessons learned so you can grow more hops
This is Tim and welcome to organic backyard gardening
Thing you'll need to decide when planting hops is to either use rhizomes or hop plants
Rhizomes are the small roots that are cut from the main root stem of a mature female hop plant that looked like this
You also can purchase hop plants. These have already started growing and will give you a head start
They look something like this
However, they are about double the cost of rhizomes hot variety that I chose to grow was a cascade hop
This is a popular variety. But one thing to know is there's many varieties that are actually proprietary
This means that you need to be licensed in order to grow them some of those include
Amarillo or Citra
When receiving your rhizomes you want to put them in a plastic baggie with a moist towel and place them in the fridge
This helps keep them moist until you're ready to start planting
Now where can you grow hops?
Well today 75% of hops grow in the United States are grown in eastern Washington in a place known as Yakima Valley
However, Hots can grow well in grow zones three to eight hops thrive at temperatures between 40 to 70
degrees
hops are susceptible to frost so you want to plant them out a
Couple weeks before your last frost date hops or vine plants that can grow extremely tall anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five feet
They like a full Sun to partial shade
I'll show you what I did to devise a trellis to help them grow up the side of my house
So let's first look at what pots I used in
Soil I decided to use containers because I didn't have a permanent location for them yet in
Hops have extremely large root systems. They'll grow very deep roots. So you want to make sure you have a large enough pot
I use 15 gallon buckets that are left over from landscaping trees. I
First filled the bucket up about 75% with compost
Followed by perlite for aeration
Then vermiculite to keep the soil moist
And topped it off with a little bit of azomite to help provide trace minerals which is totally optional
Mix well, and then add water
Now for planting on the rhizome root you'll notice that you'll have nodes
This is where the plant will start to sprout
Plant it a few inches
Into the soil with the nodes facing up
Keep the soil moist
After a few weeks they'll start to sprout shoots
I put bamboo sticks into the pot and trained the shoots up the bamboo stick by wrapping them around the bamboo
Broom to only three shoots per plant
I
Then screwed hooks into the eaves of my home and ran garden jute from the hooks down to the buckets and
Then trained the vines from VAM boost onto the string
I also trimmed some of the side shoots similar to as you would with tomatoes on the bottoms of the vine to promote
vertical growth
The watering strategy I used for these hops was to ensure that the soil did not dry out
The pots that I used had drainage holes in the bottom
I
Suggest looking at your pot and making sure that it has drainage holes
If it doesn't drill holes into the bottom of the pot this would prevent over-watering
having the roots sit in
Excess moisture which could lead the roots to rotting
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July I started to have mini hop cones form, which was really exciting
Up until now I had not
fertilized these plans
But I thought this was a good time to add additional compost and side rest the plants to add additional
nutrients to help promote further growth
I
Just simply added it to the top of the pots and
Spreaded it out accordingly
so when you're making your initial mix
Make sure that you leave some room in the pot so you can top dress later in the season
In mid-september
Some of the hops are ready for picking now. It's extremely important to know well when the right time to pick the hops are
and
this can be tricky but one of the key indicators is that the outer leaves start to turn brown and
When you roll them between your fingers, they'll sound crunchy something like this
Another indicator is to pull apart the comb and make sure that there's a yellow resin in the loop Yulin glands
Loop line glands contain the resins and oils most brewers are looking for when making beer
There's a magnitude of chemicals present as glands. The three main ones are alpha
betta acids along with essential oils
If you don't use your hops right away you'll need to properly store them
The way to do this is to dehydrate them I use a herb and spice dehydrator
I set it at 95 degrees and laid out two hops on each of the trays
Dehydrating is not the only method you can use to dry them out
you could also use methods such as putting them on a window screen and
Running a box pan underneath them
I
Then ran the dehydrator overnight about eight to nine hours
After the dehydrating process I put them into a plastic bag
Squeezed out as much air as possible and put them into the freezer to store them
They should stay fresh in the freezer for about a year and then decrease potency as time goes on
So let's talk about some things that I could have done better some lessons learned to help you
Now one thing to note I'm really happy with my
Results the first year most of the energy growing the plant is going into growing the root system
So the first year you're not going to have a really big Hartness the subsequent years
You'll have more and more of a larger harvest. Stop being said I still think there is some room for improvement in my process
So let's talk through those
First off I would have increased the pot size from 15 gallons to over 20 gallons
I noticed that some of the roots were hitting the bottom of the pot
Number two
I think I would have experimented a little bit with providing some liquid soluble fertilizer such as fish emulsion
specifically earlier on the growing season
I think this would have given the plants a head start and made nitrogen quickly accessible to the plants
Number three I would have liked to try hop plants
I think that would have given me more of a head start on the season as
Opposed to the rhizomes the rhizomes took it several weeks to sprout
In number four I probably would have started with more than two plants so I could have a larger initial harvest and
Larger harvesters the following year. Hope you found this organic backyard gardening video helpful. If you did, please click the like button below
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