hops!

this year i decided to grow some hops. i picked up four rhizomes from freshops: two cascade and two centennial. they were planted on may 22nd, 2006. here's some photos i took at various points through their growth.

june 27th, 2006

hard to judge the height from the photos, but two of the plants are around 4' tall now (well over waist height), the others are around 2-3'. the blurry ones at the end are me trying to get a closeup of the tiny little buds that have started forming since the weekend.

august 8, 2006

the hops are kind of nuts, so i took a few photos today.

centennial in the center and a bit of the cascade on the left.

me in the photo, for perspective.

shows just how nuts the cascades are going. they reached the top of the 10' lines i put up and continued to grow. they got to the point where they had about 4' dangling in the wind, then they caught back onto the original plant and started going up again. they've been throwing out side shoots all over the place too, so it's a big, crazy, tangled mess. if i'd known they'd get this big i would have put the lines up the full height of the house...

the underpants gnome. he guards the hops from the groundhog that we think is living in our neighbours yard under his deck.

close up view of the top of the cascade plant. as you can see, tons of flowers on this one. really looking forward to the harvest on this one.

same thing on the centennial. not nearly as crazy, but there's a few flowers there too.

here's a couple blurry photos of phil the groundhog.

august 12, 2006

lots of little hop cones forming.

september 25, 2006

harvest time!

centennial

cascade

here's me harvesting the centennials.

cascade on the left, centennial on the right.

the hops on my home made drying racks. centennial on the left, cascade on the right. would have been easier if i'd been consistent with the whole left/right thing.

close up view of the cascade, 0.4oz once dried.

close up view of the centennial, 0.1oz once dried.

Posted by grub at December 3, 2006 9:15 PM