Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A Hop Trellis Design For Growing Hops In The Back Yard

With the hop shortage in full swing, I decided to take a stab at growing my own hops. I’m not alone. I have found a ton of posts of new backyard hop gardeners. My bought my hop rhizomes from Thyme Garden and they should be arriving any day now. One thing though. I do not have a trellis set up yet. After scouring my yard to find the perfect place, I decided on the side of my house.

I have read a lot about different designs and am going to take a stab at building one this weekend. I did not want to “just wing it”, so I laid it out on the computer. Below is what I will be building, unless I hear some objection to this design from someone more experienced than myself.

What do you think?

Hop Trellis Design V.1 by Jeff Louella

6 comments:

Keith Brainard said...

I am growing hops for the first time this year, too!

That looks like a great setup. I think that making multiple lines off one pole is a great idea. The only thing I'm wondering is how many different plants you'll have going.

I believe that each plant makes a few bines that will each need their own support. It looks like you might have one line each for four plants. However, I think your concept might still be adaptable to multiple lines per plant. Or maybe multiple bines can grow up one string?

I have been trying to find three spots in the yard, one for each of the three rhizomes I ordered, but I don't know if there are really three good spots in my yard. A multi-plant solution like yours just might be the trick.

If you haven't found it yet, there's a Yahoo Group for growing hops that seems pretty good.

Jeff Louella said...

I am growing 4 varieties, Centennial, Chinook, Cascade, and Nugget. I planned on running 2-3 bines of 1 plant, up one line. From what I read, this should be fine.

Mike F said...

I'm looking for ideas too. I've got 4 Centennials, and might add 4 more to that. I've got a spot, but looking to do something not too crazy to scare the neighbors.

Anonymous said...

Hi there!

I liked your design so much that I built one :)

My post with photos and a description...
http://www.danbrume.com/index.php/2010/06/20/hoptrellis_up-jpg?blog=6

Thanks for posting this!

Dan

Unknown said...

I copied the same basic design except I used two treated 2" x 4" boards sunk into the concrete, 4" apart so that a carriage bolt pivot allows the 14' pole to swing down to ground level.

Before I lower the pole for harvest, I will climb a step ladder and attach a hinged leg, designed to swing out and support the pole when it reachs the horizontal position - like an old-fashioned railroad crossing gate. It WILL take two strong people to maintain control of that 4" x 4" x 14" as it comes down.

The 14" pole has warped a bit, making the horizontal cross on top sit at a 10 degree angle to the hop bedding below.

All in all, it looks pretty good. The impression is a little spindly and I was a bit worried the pair of 2" x 4" supports sandwiching the big pole just might break off at ground level in a strong wind.

So, we had a sixty mph wind come through not 2 hours after the pole was bolted into place. Lasted a good fifteen minutes in a lashing northwest Indiana torrent of spring rain. I fully expected the pole to go. It didn't.

By the way, Ace Hardware carries a stainless dog tether that augers into the ground. I used one of these tethers at the bottom of each string to anchor the strings. Works great.

Neighbor thinks the pole will look good at Christmas with lights running up the strings. Wife wants to attach a clothesline.

Unknown said...

All the things are very well defined and explained by an author,this concept is really so helpful..

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