Stringing Your Trellis and Training Your Hop Vines

Here's a couple of great videos from HopsTV for all you hop growers out there. HopsDirect has been making videos on their farming process.  Farmer, Stacy Puterbaugh, provides a number of tips to the homebrew grower.

Check out how fast these guys are stringing the hop yard! A very simple knot is tied to the top guide wire at Boy Scout competition speed. Additional crew anchor the lines to the hop mound. Hops TV Episode 10: Stringing Hop Yard:


Stacy's soil is VERY different than what I have. Looks so soft compared to the intensely hard and rocky soil that I have to work with. Goes to show that hops can grow in a variety of soil conditions. Stacy shares very important information about the amount of water needed. Hops TV Episode 2: Training Hops and General Care:


Happy Hop Growing! I'm heading to my farm tomorrow for general maintenance.

Grow Some Hops!

Information Presentation on Growing Hops
Last month I gave a presentation to my homebrew club, QUAFF, on the basics of growing your own hops.  Several have asked for the presentation to be available for reference.   Here's the general presentation on growing your own hops at home.  Post any questions in the comments.  There were several good questions at the end of the presentation.

How do I see the speaker notes!?

I have speaker notes added to much of the presentation slides but in order to see them, you need to view full window and select Actions, View speaker notes.  Leave open the pop-up, it will change when you move through the presentation.  Enjoy!

To see the speaker notes, you need to view the presentation in a full window.

At the bottom, select Actions then Show speaker notes

Homebrewers' Rhizome Swap Next Year!
This season, I think I was able to provide rhizomes to about 20 homebrewers with the hope that our local homebrewing community also becomes a hop growing community.  If you missed it, I will have plenty again next year!  Fellow QUAFFer, homebrewer, blogger, and hop grower, Jeff Crane, suggests we declare an official rhizome swap every spring.  Should be a great way to kick off the season each year and recruit more homebrewers to be hop growers.