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moving--aptWith the ongoing , home brewers are turning in record numbers to growing hops for beer at home. Growing hops is an fun way to expand your hop personal hop supply. There is great pride of enjoying a beer brewed with hops you grew at home.
Whether you live in the Northwest, Northeast, Midwest, South or California does not matter – hops can be grown in any moderate climate with proper care. Hops grow from small root-like cuttings about a foot long called rhizomes.
Rhizomes can be purchased from a variety of places online and mailed to your home – just do a quick search for “hop rhizomes” on google.
Location for Growing Hops
Select an area with plenty of sun. Hops need at least 6-8 hours of sun a day, so the South facing side of your home or an exposed site is a good location. Hop vines (called bines) can grow to over 25 feet and weigh over 20 pounds, so vertical space for a trellis is important as well.
Hops prefer well-aerated soil that is rich in nutrients and has good drainage. If you are going to plant several varieties, keep them well separated in your garden. Hop roots will spread quickly and take over the garden unless you separate them and trim the roots each season.
Hop Planting and Care
Hops should be planted in the Spring, late enough to avoid a frost. Fertilize liberally before planting. Plant your hops in a mound and aerate the ground by turning it over several times to aid drainage, enhance growth and prevent disease. Place the rhizomes about 4 inches deep, and make your mound of soil about a foot high to aid drainage. Place the root side of the rhizome down. Cover the mound with some straw or light mulch to inhibit the weeds.
The hop bines grow vertically and require some kind of trellis. Your trellis could some heavy rope or twine going from ground level to your roof, or a few poles securely mounted in the ground. If using rope, select rough twine-like rope so the bines can grab onto it. Keep in mind that the hop bines can be 25+ feet long and weigh 20+ pounds. The trellis should be strong and secure.
Hops also enjoy lots of water and sunlight. In the dry climates or the heat of summer, they may need to be watered daily. Once the hops begins to grow, select the best bines and wrap them around your trellis to train them. You will need to train the hops for a few days, but eventually they will begin growing in a clockwise direction from east to west around your trellis. Train the best shoots and trim the rest off.
Harvesting and Drying your Hops
Your hops will continue to grow throughout the summer, and will be ready to harvest by late summer. The harvest in the first year may not be huge, and in fact it could be very small – hops don’t reach peak yield in the first year.
To determine when to harvest, you need to examine the cones. Mature hop cones will be dry to the touch, springy, have a very strong aromatic hop odor, and leave yellow lupulin powder on your fingers. Check the cones every day or two, and when you think they are ripe, pick one and open it. It should be filled with thick yellow-gold lupulin powder if it is fully ripened.
The hops may not all ripen at once, but you need to harvest each as it ripens. Dry the hops out in a warm dry spot in your house, and keep them away from sunlight. Sunlight can seriously damage picked hops. A paper bag is a good place to store them while drying. The hops should dry out in a week or two. After that, place them in a sealed bag and store the hop cones in your freezer. Remove as much oxygen as possible from the bag to avoid oxidization.
Maintenance of Your Hops
Cut the bines back to 3 feet or so after harvesting. The winter frost will kill off the bines, after which you can cut them back further and cover them until Spring. When Spring comes, take a spade and cut around the rhizome to trim the roots back to about a foot. Trimming the roots will prevent the hops from consuming your entire garden, as they tend to spread rapidly. Add some fertilizer, fresh mulch and a new trellis and you will be ready to grow hops for a fresh new season.
If you want to read more about growing hops, Beer Bits has put together a page of related .
A properly cared-for hops garden will keep you in fresh hops for years to come.
Note: Hops can be dangerous for dogs to consume so please don’t feed your pets hops.
Thanks again for joining us, and if you have enjoyed this article, please to our Home Brewing blog or drop a guest vote on
using the vote button on the right.
BYO Magazine: “Hop Growing”, March-April 2008, Vol 12, No 2
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Perry Droast @ 9:53 pm
Grow More of the Best Tasting Tomatoes
in Your Own Garden
Would you like to grow more tomatoes than you’ve ever grown in your life, in less space, and with less work? Was your last tomato harvest as good as you hoped? Are you looking for a better way to grow more ripe, juicy, better tasting tomatoes than you’ve ever grown?
If you don’t provide the three basic needs of your tomato plants in a very specific manner, you could be limiting your harvest without even knowing it. Here’s your chance to find out what helps your harvest the most and what wastes your time without providing much benefit. Even if you had a good harvest last season, you’ll see how to make your next growing season even better.
A three-generation gardening secret about to be revealed
Before we get into the secret though, I need to explain how my love for gardening and the methods I use came to exist. It’s roots are three generations deep. My grandfather did two things extremely well. He caught lots of fish and he grew his own organic garden. We’re only going to talk about his gardening methods here. We’ll leave the fishing for another day.
Some of my earliest memories of my grandfather (my mother’s father) are helping him feed and turn the compost pile. I can still picture the compost bin along with the rest of his garden in my mind just like it was yesterday. The Swiss chard was taller than I was back then. And when I walked under the grape arbor, I felt like I was walking into an airplane hanger. And yet his garden was really fairly small. He just figured out how to grow amazing amounts of fruit and vegetables in a small area.
Unfortunately, my grandfather died when I was seven years old. Fortunately, the love of making compost and growing a garden was already instilled into my very being. Not only that, my parents continued to nurture my love of gardening helping it to grow into a life-long passion.
TenPoundTomato unleashes the “Tomato Invasion Method”…
…of organic gardening.
What’s a “tomato invasion” you ask?
You know you are suffering through a tomato invasion when…
o You have so many fresh tomatoes on the counter in the kitchen your spouse (my wife in my case) tells you to quit picking.
o Your neighbors hide behind closed curtains as you walk up to the front door with another bag of tomatoes and other fresh-picked vegetables from your garden.
o You can tomato sauce on Saturday and by Wednesday you need to can another batch.
I think you get the picture.
In my opinion, you can never have too many tomatoes. My wife would beg to differ. Don’t get me wrong, she loves tomatoes almost as much as I do. Except she doesn’t like her kitchen counters to look messy. And when 20 or 30 tomatoes show up every other day or three, she starts getting a little antsy.
The next thing you know, we’re having tomato and onion salad for lunch and dinner. I’m forced to have tomato sandwiches for lunch with a little avocado just to add a little extra to the mix. Actually, in season, I could eat tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner, I love them so much.
OK, here’s…
How to create your own “Tomato Invasion”
In the second paragraph I mentioned the three basic needs of tomato plants. Here goes…
1. Great soil full of compost…to provide season-long nutrition to the plant and the tomatoes
2. Regular deep watering…while letting the plants roots almost dry out between watering…tomatoes don’t like wet feet and they don’t like to get too dry either
3. All-day bright sun…at least 6 hours, all day is better
As you can guess, there are a lot more details involved. However, if you provide these 3 basics you’re already half way there.
How did I develop the “Tomato Invasion Method” of gardening?
It wasn’t necessarily easy, however it was a labor of love. Because of 3 colleges I attended, various jobs, and my current career, I’ve had to move quite a number of times. This forced me to learn how to turn lousy sterile soil (the kind of soil you typically find in backyards throughout America) into humus rich garden soil in the shortest time possible.
Because I don’t like to pay for garden amendments and fertilizer unless I really need to, I developed a method of making compost fairly fast. I don’t use a compost tumbler which would make this process even faster, mainly because I like the exercise and peace of mind that comes with turning the compost pile. I guess it’s a guy thing, I like to play in the dirt.
So for the last 30 years or so, I’ve been perfecting my methods and enjoying the produce along the way.
And that’s the short version of how I came to develop my “Tomato Invasion Method” of growing an organic garden. This system developed over many years of growing tomatoes just about anywhere I could. Even if I couldn’t grow a complete garden where I was living at the time, I always grew at least one or two tomato plants. During college, I had one roommate tell me he never wanted to move out, just because he loved the tomatoes I grew.
Although we moved to different places after the school year finished, we are still close friends today. And we both grow our own gardens, so we can compare notes, and most importantly, brag about who got the first ripe tomato of the season and who grew the most tomatoes off their two best plants.
That’s how the secret of the “Tomato Invasion Method” was born.
Here are just a few of the ways you’ll find on this website and in my newsletter “Tomato Invasion” all geared toward improving your tomatoes and the rest of your garden too…
o Easy Organic Methods – Hopefully you already garden organically…if not you’re about to see how a few simple changes can make a big difference in the quality of your harvest.
o Time-saving Tips – Because most of us are so busy these days, finding ways to save time and still garden better has never been more important.
o Save Money – recession or not, it’s always a great time to save money. I’ll show you how to save money on your garden, and the tomatoes and other produce you grow yourself will save you a boatload of money off your grocery bill.
o Superb Taste – I don’t know anyone that thinks most of the tomatoes or other vegetables they buy at the grocery store taste anywhere close to home-grown. Once you’ve eaten tomatoes out of your own garden, you’ll never want to go back.
o Use Less Space – garden space always seems to run out before we can get everything planted in the ground.
We all have our own reasons why we grow tomatoes. For me, it’s because I love to eat fresh tomatoes. Straight out of my garden into a fresh salad (also homegrown) can’t be beat. Or big, juicy slices straight into a sandwich at lunch time, any time for that matter, takes me as close to heaven as a living being can get.
Some gardeners I know have turned growing tomatoes into a competitive sport. The race to the earliest ripe tomato in town takes gardening to an all new level. In search of the Holy Grail of tomato gardening, that first ripe tomato early in the growing season, many gardeners expend a great deal of effort. As soon as their fall garden is harvested, they start planning for the spring.
Why start Ten Pound Tomato.com?
A variety of reasons. I’ve searched the Internet high and low and can’t seem to find the kind of information I need to keep getting better at gardening. I own an extensive library of books of all kinds, including a large number of gardening books. I subscribed to several gardening magazine.
And yet I still couldn’t find all the answers I was looking for.
I’m assuming if I can’t locate one source of complete gardening information, that other people can’t find it either. So one night, two years ago, I decided to write a book. A gardening book that beginners could use to become successful gardeners and experienced gardeners could use as a valuable resource as well.
I still haven’t written that book. However, I have written the chapter on growing tomatoes. And I’ve decide to give this chapter of my book away as an enticement to sign up for my free email newsletter.
As long as you stay subscribed (you may unsubscribe at any time) as I write the rest of the book, you’ll be the first to know about it. I’ll share the content and hopefully one day, when the book is finished, you’ll feel like buying it. Either way, you’ll already be miles ahead in your quest for the perfect garden.
Even if you don’t buy the book, you’ll still receive a free bounty of information gleaned from over 30 years of organic gardening. Each newsletter contains detailed information on one topic. I promise not to overload you with a bunch of fluff, designed to make you think you’re getting something valuable only to realize later it’s not. I promise to make it fun to read, applicable to your own garden, and always organic in nature.
So once again, why should you subscribe?
3 good reasons…
1 Good useful organic gardening information sent out one to two times a month. Although the length will vary, you won’t need more than a few minutes or so to read it.
2 No external advertisements allowed in my newsletter. If I tell you about a particular product, it’s because I’ve used it and found it to be beneficial.
3 As this website grows, there will be lots of articles on a variety of subjects related to gardening and other lifestyle subjects closely related to gardening. Many of these pages will be hidden and you won’t be able to find them unless you subscribe. These articles will only be directly linked in the newsletter itself. Without this link, you’ll miss out on some very valuable gardening information.
So go ahead and subscribe using the opt-in box in the upper right-hand column to sign up.
Happy growing,
Perry Droast
The Backyard Gardener
P.S. If you find something you agree with, something you disagree with, or a mistake please email me using the
link at the top of the page. I’m always open to suggestion and thankful for the feedback.
May your compost rot quickly and your garden remain pest-free.
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in Your Own Garden
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Sign up for the Tomato Invasion newsletter here. You'll receive free organic gardening tips and advice, product reviews, and other things like family recipes. As a bonus, you'll receive a downloadable report, Tomato Invasion.&
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