End of the 2012 Hop Growing Experiment

My experiment on growing hops in the tropics is over and I didn't get any cones.  This year was hot and windy and I had trouble keeping the leaves on the plants from drying out without making the soil too wet.

I just dug up my rhizomes and stuck them in the fridge.  I'll probably give it another shot next year and hope for better weather.

Hops Update

After dropping the twine on my Nugget bines a third time, one of the the bines has again reached the top of the twine.  I think at this point I'm going to let the top of the bine start slumping over.  I read that would encourage the growth of laterals.  I think that the length on that Nugget bine is at approximately 15 feet now.  I think that's pretty good for a bine growing on a condo balcony.

The stumpy Cascade seems to have given up and shriveled to death.  That sucks, but that's the reason I bought two  rhizomes of each variety.

The surviving Cascade is still shorter than the two Nugget bines, but it's started shooting out new horizontal growth.  I hope those are the laterals I've been reading about.

Hop Update

A couple of days ago I had to add about five extra feet to the twine on my Nugget hops.  The Nuggets are continuing to grow vigorously.  The healthy cascade is still growing rapidly, though not as impressively as the Nuggets.

Unfortunately, the sickly Cascade is looking like a goner.

As for the fungus gnats, I've been letting my soil dry until I see the leaves at the top getting a little crispy before I water.  I've also been watering with the garlic solution.  The gnats aren't as plentiful as they were, but there's still a lot of them buzzing around my pots.  I've also started putting out little dishes of vinegar mixed with a few drops of dish soap around the plants.  The vinegar traps look like they're catching hundreds of gnats, but they don't stop coming.  I didn't want to use poison on my plants, but I'm starting to reconsider now that I'm seeing gnats buzzing around my house (where they might land in my beer).

Hop Update

I've recently noticed a bunch of fungus gnats (identified from a google image search) coming out of my hop containers.  I've decided to wait longer between waterings and apply a garlic water recipe I found on the internet (head of garlic soaked in water for 2 days, then strained and diluted to 1 gallon).  I also added chilis to the water because I read that was supposed to repel other pests.  I'll see how it works in a few days.  The plants seem to be doing fine despite the bugs, with the exception of my sickly Cascade.

Hops Growing Update

There hasn't been much going on in the hopyard so there hasn't been much to post about.  Everything is still growing bigger, except for that stumpy Cascade (which still looks small and sickly).  You can see the stumpy Cascade on the right side of the photo.  

As mentioned before, I was using the ajustable trellis system described in a BYO article (http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/1926-growing-hops-in-containers).  Today, I saw that the Nugget plants were reaching the top of my trellis, so I decided to drop them.  I didn't want the bines flopping in the wind because it's been uncharacteristically windy for me this year.  To avoid having lots of slack bines flopping around in the wind, I let the lower part of the bines flop over the edges of my growing containers.  Then, I attached the top of the twine hanging over the bucket to the twine at the point where I had attached to base of the twine to the container.  This allowed me to leave the lower part of the twine hanging loose, while pulling the upper part of the twine snug.  I tried to get a picture of what I did below.

Hop Experiment: Three Weeks

It's about three weeks since I planted my rhizomes.  The last rhizome to sprout was this Cascade, which seems to be moving along very slowly for some reason.  I'm glad I bought a second Cascade because this one is lagging compared to the other plants.  The sprouts also look strange compared to the sprouts from the other plants.

In comparison to that disappointing Cascade,  this one seems to be moving along nicely, although slower than the Nugget plants.  It's approximately 13 inches right now.

The Nugget plants continue to be the most impressive, with the longest bine (below) at approximately 25 inches.

You may also be able to see that I've rearranged the Christmas lights.  I have them hanging from my stakes so that the string runs vertically behind each bine.  I've also moved the grow bulbs (of which I have two in aluminum light fixtures) up the stakes so that they're above the top of the Nugget plants.  

Hop Experiment: Two Weeks

It's been about two weeks since I put my rhizomes in the ground and they've finally all put up shoots.  This Cascade was the last to put something up.

 The Nuggets (below) are way ahead of the Cascades.  The bines on the Nuggets were getting long enough to bend to the side, but weren't long enough to reach the twine I had secured to my containers.  I ended up tying an extra lengths of twine to the pieces I had already strung up.  Then I wrapped the bines around those extra pieces of twine.

 This (below) was the first of my two Cascades to put up shoots and it's already way ahead of the second Cascade.  I'm a little concerned that it's looking wispy compared to the Nuggets.

At this point, I have each of my four rhizomes in it's own five gallon bucket with commercial potting soil.  I'm using an adjustable trellis system similar to the one described in this BYO article (http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/1926-growing-hops-in-containers), except that I'm limited to a 6.5 ft stake.  I would have preferred to use a larger stake, but that was about as tall as I could make them while still being able to move the plants.  

Cascade Sprouts

I noticed some sprouts finally coming out of one of my Cascades today.  The Nugget rhizomes have both already have about six inches of growth with nice shapely leaves.  I was concerned about the amount of light coming off of the two LED grow bulbs I initially set up to supplement my daylight, so I've added a string of 60 white LED Christmas lights I had.

More Nugget Shoots

The second Nugget put up a shoot today, but still nothing from the Cascades. The first nugget has also put up some new shoots. Now that I have some shoots, I've put a few lights on a timer to come on in the morning before sunrise and again after sunset to try and mimic fourteen hours of light. I had been thinking about supplementing my short tropic days with artificial light and decided to try it after reading a blog about growing hops in South Africa here http://www.heydenrych.info/hop_growing.html.

First Sprout

Right after my last post, I put two Nugget rhizomes and two Cascade rhizomes into the dirt. Today, just three days later, the first sprout poked out of the dirt from one of the Nugget rhizomes.

Hop Experiment

My rhizomes have arrived! Soon I'll start my experiment: growing hops in the tropics with artificial lighting to supplement the day length.