The big move.

So the time for the big move finally arrived. Transplanting hops is not something I have tried before but I figured that I don't have much to lose and if they do indeed survive the move I won't have to start from scratch again next year. I had previously shown you my new raised bed for them to move into. This is the last pic I took before removing them:

It was of course at this point that I discovered some cones I had missed at harvest time:

Just to be as careful as possible I decided to excavate them by hand. I also thought I would start with the Willamette, partly because it had been the least productive in terms of above ground growth but also because I was hoping that this would mean that there was much more root growth and thus would be more forgiving while I tried to find the best way of doing this. Here's what its exposed roots looked like:

You should be able to make out the original rhizome that I planted in the middle. The roots that had grown since were very rubbery and floppy. I'm not entirely sure if this is natural or because they were a little dry. I also found out pretty quickly that, although rubbery, when I tried pulling at the end to break them off where they were growing through the raised bed the rubbery part easily separated from an inner fibrous core. I'm pretty sure this is not very good for them. With the benefit of hindsight, using secateurs or some other cutting implement would have been better. 

 

As the Willamette and Cascade are entwined around the same shepherd's hook I thought I should move them together. Here you can see the difference between the two root systems. The Cascade on the left has much finer branching of its roots:

 

 

The fine nature of the branching of these roots meant there was a lot more tearing as I tried to excavate them. After a lot of the gentlest teasing out of the roots I could manage this was the result:

To minimise the amount of time out of soil I moved them immediately, rather than removing the Columbus and moving everything at once. The new place is only just down the road after all. Here's what they looked like once in the new raised bed:

I repeated the procedure with the Columbus as best I could:

Unfortunately, these roots were not nearly as cooperative as the others and there was some tearing at the point where the roots met the above ground stems:

Not a great start. This is what they all looked like once I'd finished the move and given them a thorough soaking:

So far so good, you might think. The more botanically minded will probably have guessed already what's coming. The very next morning, this is what I found:

Very sad looking hop plants. Nearly all of the leaves have shrivelled up and died and become brittle. This process continued for a couple of days:

This really doesn't look good for future hop growth from these plants. You might be able to see that I have wound a soaker hose around the raised bed, so instead of using a spray to water them I have been leaving water running through it for several hours a day. There is some small reason for optimism though. This is what the back of the Columbus looks like:

The Cascade:

And the Willamette:

As I hope you can see there are still some leaves that are not yet shrivelled up. I am hopeful that they can all recover from here. When or if I see any new growth I will be sure to document it. On the plus side I found this sprouting out of our compost:

Perhaps this will have to become a tomato growing blog next year.

Ready for moving

Looking at my last entry, I realise that things have moved on somewhat. The cones on the Columbus have appeared in droves:

These are nice plump cones that have a faint smell of what hops should smell like. I have also noticed that some of the cones have what look like smaller cones growing just above them in fronds:

Not sure what these are yet. With any luck they'll be extra cones. May just have to wait and see what happens to them.

The Cascade has also produced a good number of cones, although not nearly as much as the Columbus:

Hopefully, I'll get a decent amount out of this. The Willamette, unfortunately, has only produced a handful:

There are only one or two others that you can't see in this picture. Hopefully, there has been a lot of effort put into developing its root system. With any luck next year will give me a great harvest.

Something else that has been progressing is our house moving. To that end I have built another raised bed ready for the move of the hops:

I used the same procedure as last time with the slight exception that I have used a year's worth of compost that we generated in our previous place mixed with a couple of bags of top soil that I found under the screen porch in our new place. The idea is that they will grow up to the window above:

This will hopefully provide some shade immediately below. To help with stringing them up I've stretched some twine across the windowsill:

Somewhat difficult to see but I have inserted a couple of short lengths of bamboo into the holes in the brick. I drilled a couple of small holes into the pieces of bamboo and threaded some twine through. The plan is that pulling down on the twine in between will only serve to wedge the bamboo into the bricks more. We shall see soon enough when I transplant the plants to this bed.

Caged!

Have now installed some tomato cages, in the same way I did last year in Houston. This will give me a week or so breathing space in terms of building a larger arbour for them to grow over. Here's one of the cats illustrating why the cages are also useful for their own protection:

I don't know yet if the maple tree on the right is going to interfere with the Columbus. I suspect it will be just fine with some hops growing up and over it.

New season, new state, new hops.

A lot has happened since my last post. I'm no longer in Houston but have moved to the DC area. This unfortunately meant leaving behind all the work I did last year. I'm hoping that this loss will be compensated by more favourable growing conditions further North, particularly with the longer summer days. I have no idea whether the hops I left behind will be retained by the new tenants. While we were away the landlord's gardeners had ripped out all of the plants in the raised beds in the garden. The only exceptions to this were some asparagus and my hops. I very much like the idea of the next people there being pleasantly surprised by hops appearing this year, the asparagus was well established too.

On to this year. Our new garden does not have any raised beds so I have just had to make one. Why bother you may well ask. If there is one consistent thing I have read about the requirements for hops it is that they do not like being water logged. Rhizomes will rot if they spend a lot of time sitting in water. Drainage becomes the most important thing as they are really not very fussy otherwise.

I thought I'd use my first post this year to detail how I've made this raised bed (laugh a minute on this blog). First off I used timber that you should be able to get at any hardware store or garden centre. For this I bought 5 x 8ft lengths. The two long sides each have two on top of each other and the fifth length was cut into four 2 feet lengths which are stacked two high at the ends.

The whole thing is stabilised by having the corners overlapping, holes drilled through both planks and then nailing the them together. Ordinarily I would have chosen to use an iron bar of some sort for this but I don't have any way of cutting one. So I spontaneously invented the bamboo nail, by cutting single sections of some bamboo we had lying around the garden:

I don't really know if I've invented this but googling "bamboo nails" isn't very helpful and returns results for nail salons. Patent pending I think I'll call this for now. Each corner had three holes drilled and a nail driven through and into the soil, which should help to keep the whole bed in place:

With the frame in place the next step is to try and discourage anything from growing up through it from underneath. To this end I covered the ground with cardboard:

As I mentioned before, drainage is very much a concern. To help with that I added a layer of gravel:

Now we're ready for the earth itself. I reckon the volume of this bed so far is ~8 cubic feet (8x2x0.5) so I bought 5 bags of earth, each 1.5 cubic feet, giving me 7.5 cubic feet. This actually slightly over filled the bed:

You may or may not be able to tell from this pic but the earth is somewhat piled up. I suspect this will settle down with watering, rain, etc.. The cost of all these materials came to ~$50.

Next step is to plant the rhizomes, which arrived the same day as their bed was made (being able plan things around shipping estimates is great). This year I bought my rhizomes from Austin Home Brew, which is where I get all my homebrewing ingredients and kit. This year I got Willamette (particularly given how well they did in Houston), Cascade, Galena and Columbus rhizomes. I've updated the hop height graph at top right. It will probably be a couple of weeks before there is anything to report there though. Here's a pic of the Willamette being planted:

All of these rhizomes looked promising, as judged by the fact they all have at least one new shoot coming out from the main root. You can see two in the pic above. The rhizome is placed in a hole a couple of inches deep, covered and then the whole bed given a good soak:

We even got a good amount of rain last night to help. It remains to be seen how well the rhizomes have survived the journey through the post. Last year I bought them directly from DeFalcos in Houston and planted them as soon as I got home. Fingers crossed they all survived.

The ultimate goal, other than producing some hops to add to my beer, is to have them grow over some garden furniture to provide some shade. At the moment I'm thinking of a sturdy porch swing but it will be several weeks before a final decision needs to be made.

This has ended up being something of a marathon post. I suspect future posts will be a lot shorter and sweeter.