Hop Garden Update #2

If you missed the first hop garden progress report – check it out here.

As promised last week, I got the lines hung and the area cleaned up quite a bit.

So first, the trellis.  As you can see from the picture, the design is fairly simple.

The 2 main considerations were that it had to be removable when not in use (the less harassment I get from the HOA, the better!) and it had to be expandable for future growth.

Basically its just 2 lengths of 4″x4″ post joined by a collar with a couple of crossbars at the top to hang the lines from.  All standard Home Depot/Lowe’s kit.

The bottom post is buried about 4 feet in the ground and encased in a couple sacks of quickrete.

The collar is 2 feet long – basically just a square sleeve constructed of a pair of 1″x”4 and 1″x”6 board screwed together.  Then some heavy gauge bolts through the top and bottom posts to hold them in place.  Seems fairly sturdy so far…

I used a couple of wood shims to get the top post (mostly) plumb in the collar before drilling/bolting it down.

The lines run from the stakes in the ground, up over the crossbar and are tied off with plenty of extra length to the post.  They just sit in a notch on the crossbar to keep them from moving.

This way the lines can be let out if extra length is needed, or to pick cones from the top without having to permanently cut the whole thing down.  I’ve seen a few people use pullies at the top, but it seems like they could get fouled by the bines so I skipped them.

The bedding is also pretty simple.  Just a layer of weed-blocker material and a whole bunch of mulch.

I’ve since read that wood mulch isn’t really ideal because it can promote mold growth and leach nutrients from the soil.  But around here it gets quite hot in the summer (weeks of high 90′s) and very little rain.  So I think anything that holds onto some moisture will help more than it hurts.  We shall see…

As for fertilizer, I’ve just been using some Miracle-Gro Tomato plant food.  But now that the area is pretty much done, I’m going to start looking at better alternatives for Update #3.  So stay tuned for that.

Speaking of Update#3 – it will be one month from now as there probably won’t be much to report before then.  In the mean time I have a couple of other interesting projects coming up.  And if you’re still jonesing for some more hop growing knowledge check out the Grow Hops Yahoo group.  Tons of technical information over there.

Tagged as: garden, growing, hops, post, rhizomes, trellis