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We now have a range of base and specialty malts for sale. A catalog and new website is coming soon. Let us know what you need and we will sell it to you or special order it for you. Please bear with us during this initial stage and we will have the full service shop available in no time.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The Hop-in (Part 2)

With some help from the family, the weekend was spent making sure the rest of the hops got in the ground.  It was a little easier to get excited about doing this because, as can be seen in the photo, the hops in the first few rows have started growing.  However, I now feel like the race is on to get the trellis system in place.  These vines are going to need something to climb pretty soon.  Some of them have grown 4-5" just in the week since I planted them!

By Sunday afternoon I had successfully put 100 cascade and 20 chinook rhizomes in the ground.  By the end I had a pretty good system that was at least twice as fast as the first row.  I guess it is a learning experience.  It is funny, after all the planning with plant density and row spacing, I ended up with 4 unused rows.  I think I was thinking of commercial spacing when I calculated my density, but I ended up with doubled density on the plant-plant spacing (no need to machine cultivate between plants) and a 6' instead of 7' spacing between rows due to the smaller size of my compact tractor.  I think this will be good.  From what  have read I will not be limited in terms of growth and light, but will clearly max out what I will get from my 1/5 acres test plot.  We have 5 rows of cascade and 1 row of chinook.  It worked out perfectly with the number of rhizomes we ordered.

One of us also came up with the cool idea of a hops adoption program.  We are working on the details, but it would allow a remote interested party to adopt a plant.  We could call it the remote Hop Ownership Program (rHOP).  This also got me thinking about pre-orders for home-brewers that would like to adopt a hop and receive the hop cones from their plant at harvest time for that special batch (or two of beer.  This could be a cool value added product.  If anyone is interested in this opportunity please let us know.

2 comments:

  1. you weren't joking about those things growing quickly. glad you got the rest of the plants put in. i'd be lying if i said i wasn't skeptical when we left carbondale. now get to building those trellises!

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