Garden Hops

Like almost everything I grow in my garden I grow hops because they look great in a bouquet. Apparently they also work great for making beer- but I don't know anything about that. This plant is not easy to find in nurseries but I ordered mine from a catalog. Check to see what variety works best for your area. Pinetree seed company is a smaller seed company based in Maine so I know what works for them will work for me.  https://www.superseeds.com/products.php?search=hops Cascade is the variety I got for it's abundance of hops late summer/fall.This is what they look like on my garage in the summer;

Please be forewarned- Be sure you want this plant because if you change you mind a few years after planting it you will need to resort to round-up or napalm to get rid of it. I pulled up part of a driveway and found rhizomes from my hops growing under the pavement.

The prefect place to plant a hop plant is where ever you want to cover something- like maybe the view of your neighbors house. They will grow 30 feet in one season, but they die back to the ground each fall so your relief from your neighbor is only seasonal.

The plants do take a year at least to get established but once the do they will sprout out of the soil jack and the bean stock style in the spring. I think one spring I measured their growth at an inch a day. You need to give hops something to climb, they prefer tendriling up so fishing wire or rope work well. If you don't mind putting up something for them to climb each year use natural twine so when  they die back to the ground  you can cut the twine and compost it with the hops, that way you are not trying to pull fishing wire out of a mess of dead vines.

The actual hops will begin to form in July in my area and really stay green into early September, they still look good brown as well. Here is a few pictures of garden hops as a boutonniere ( the guys love this!) and in arrangements;

In the early spring the second year pick 3-5 vines to leave and cut the rest to the ground, more will sprout I just periodically whack them down as I am walking by with my clippers. Mid summer if you can find the time cut the leaves off the bottom few feet of the vines, this helps to keep pests and disease away. I actually did this last year and it seemed to make a difference. My hops were disease and pest free the first three years, then they got hit with some little thing chewing the leaves until they were skeletonized. I could never find what was doing this but last year after really thinning the canes and taking the leaves off the bottom I didn't have that as a problem.This is definitely a great plant to try out in your garden!