Thoughts . . . by Mark Rich

. . . scribbled . . . scrawled . . . trimmed . . . typewritten . . . grubbed up . . . squeezed from circumstance . . .

Monday, April 26, 2010

Hops-Planting

What great chaos results from tidying up a house for visitors. I just wasted an hour or two fruitlessly looking for items I thought were safely accessible ... one of which I need to find today ... frustrating!

A bit of progress did occur during the visit, even though elder sibling's stated goal for the visit was to see more of Wisconsin -- which kept our familial rear ends planted in car seats. One morning, though, he and I began weeding the backyard area around the established hop vines. I finished the job this weekend, and made my final decisions on placement of the new ones.

I moved and re-wired my trellis for our pair of Willamettes, which are starting into their second year. Opting to keep the new hops nearby, at five-foot distances I planted the Mt. Hood and Cascade, and, in a corner, the two Sterling rhizomes. We may end up a bit overwhelmed with cones, this fall -- which prospect fails to alarm me.

One decision I had to make was whether to raise more trellises. I finally opted on the tall-pole method of growing, for the new vines ... which means that next year, or maybe even this one, I will be toying with different pole-anchoring methods. Right now I am imagining tall steel posts, with wooden poles strapped onto them.

The poor hops rhizomes had to spend far too long in the refrigerator awaiting their planting, due to the hectic nature of these past few weeks -- but seem none the worse for it.

Cheers ...

1 comment:

  1. I want to grow hops - but am feeling timid. I have a friend here who grew hops as a sunshade for her porch at a former abode and they were full of little peeping frogs - so cool.

    ReplyDelete