So, here it is , the big end-of-season article. This is the article I have been promising since late July. The article I have been avoiding like a vegan food truck avoids setting up shop at a Florida Georgia Line concert.
My excuses are, many, varied, and all equally full of shit. I have been procrastinating at 6th grade summer school levels. I am sure the most understandable excuse is fear. I am supremely afraid of writing all of this years' successes and failures down and watching as all the items on the "failures" list gang up and give my small group of successes swirlies in the gym locker room. However; the emergence of hop cones in the plot have given me the kick in the pants I needed to break my writing slump. Here goes.
Infrastructure
The trellis that I put in this year was insufficient. My biggest issue was verticality for initial growth of the hops, and sturdiness of my trellis and growth guideline support wire.
The hops were getting buried in cover crops early and quickly. The cover crops were not crowding the hops by any means, but the cover crop growth was far more vigorous which caused two problems. First, I was losing my hops in the dense mat of clover, turnips, mustard greens etc.which caused a huge headache when I had to find, disentangle, and then re-train my hops onto the line. Secondly, sun was having a hard time getting to my hop leaves through a carpet of overgrowth.
Next year I am going to experiment with hardened bamboo to allow an initial vertical growth of 4-6 feet before letting the hops grow horizontal. I think this will keep infrastructure costs down, while giving the hops a head-start against the much needed cover crops.
The next problem I need to address will be the trellis itself. The nylon guidelines are....okay...but a better balance of fiber, strength, and weather resistance would be ideal. Still working on that problem...coconut fiber? Hemp? Ideas are welcome folk...I'm all ears...eyes?
My wire setup (the wire that supports all of the guidelines) needs to be anchored more securely. There may as well be duct tape holding it together. Now, this doesn't mean more infrastructure. The experiences of this year have taught me that wind, weight of the hops, and moist soil we not well-accounted for with depth of wire anchors and post holes. Materials stay the same, methods need to change, no extra cost.
As for other infrastructure, I had none. I used no irrigation, no apparatus for seeding, weeding, or spraying. I used little to no hardware securing my trellis (two eye bolts, steel wire, aluminum stakes, and turnbuckle).
Planting
No more getting fancy.
I went a little nuts with planting this season.
After reading "One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fuokua prior to my project, I was convinced I could sow all sorts of vegetables amongst my brewing grains. I thought to myself, "if my project is a failure, at least I could grow all sorts of food for my family this year."
While, this may work on the scale of several acres..with the odd cucumber, melon, or radish growing into a sizeable addition to a balanced lunch...it was a complete failure which I took much harder than my wife, to whom I gave promises of crisp spring onions, juicy summer watermelon, and hardy winter squash. That shit needs a chance to get up to the sun. Same problem with the hops, but at least I made the hops bright yellow markers to tell me where and what variety. My poor food had no chance....except the turnips...I have soooooo many turnips.
Now, let's talk grains. No more oats. I have no idea how this happened....my oats got mixed in with my barley, and my barley was inundated with oats. I distinctly remember separating the seeds and meticulously planting them on separate sides of the plot. Oats are out, I am simplifying the operation. Less is more, and the less work I have to do, the more successful the project. Harvesting was a nightmare....an itchy, stuffy, miserable nightmare. Has anyone ever seen the last half of the movie "Coraline"? Like that, but with grains.
Last, but not least...cover crops. Oh my god, OH EM GEE folks! Nope...nope, nope, nope...even hurts to type it.
I planted some gnarley stuff this year. I think if it was closer, it would have dragged my house into the ground. I'm positive that if I used Roundup tomorrow...the cover crops would laugh at me and give me a wedgie. Thank jeebus I planted annuals. So, the plan for next year is grains, clover and mustard greens (brassicas). It'll stay low, give good cover, attract beneficial insects, and won't make me feel the need to kiss my wife and daughter goodbye every time I go into the backyard.
Successes: the hops seem to have done just fine. I researched planting and care for 10 minutes on a slow Saturday at the Fire Dept and all 20 rhizomes sprouted. Yay!
Care and Maintenance
While researching care for hops plants, the were a lot of mixed views on water, sunlight, nutrient requirements, and pruning. (Please let me know if there is a
Definitive book on hops planting and care, that would be super duper) My mantra for the project continues to be "Simple is Best", or maybe "Cheap is Best" depending on the mood you catch me in...
That being said, I let the plants run wild. No pruning, no watering, no fertilizer, no prepared compost, and let sunlight fall where it may (after hacking away cover crops every few days). The soil remained moist beneath the cover crops throughout the hottest parts of the Chicago summer. There was never a point where I was terribly worried about watering back there, maybe one or two days when some of the cover crop looked a little "wiltey".
I had also read that one was supposed to choose the hardiest shoots from the rhizome to train, and then prune any other shoots that emerge later in the season. I chose to let any and all shoots emerge. My reasoning is this, the more leafy surface area, the more energy being captured for the plant. The more energy for the plant, the more stored for both the root system and, in turn, for the soil ecosystem. Basically, I wasn't concerned about cone production this year, I just wanted the root system to establish itself as much as it possibly could this first year. I have no idea if this work or not, but I tried it, next year I will prune half and compare.
Pests
Very early in the season I started seeing insects I had never seen before. I tried to observe and identify as many as I could. I found that, including the noticeable increase in spiders (they were everywhere every time I took a step there had to have been 3-4 that scurried away), there was also the emergence of a variety of predatory beetles. I had very little issue with anything eating my hops. A few holes in leaves here and there, but no real damage.
Weeds
Again, the terrifying monster that I so naively referred to as cover crops, kept weeds to a bare minimum. No issues with invasive weeds, even less of a problem after I mowed the cover crops 2 weeks ago and left all of that biomass in a thick layer over the soil.
I will repeat a piece of information I wrote about in earlier posts. I believe this comes from Mark Shepard's "Restoration Agriculture". To paraphrase, weeds are a product of poor soil. Natural disturbances of topsoil, such as earthquakes, landslides, glacial movement etc. destroy established perennials and forested areas. The resulting exposure of rock, clay, and other harsh planting environments need "first responders" to repopulate the harsh environment. This first response team is what we refer to as "weeds". Hardy, resilient, with a tough-as-nails root system, and unparalleled seed distribution abilities. Once weeds make the soil more habitable, the biome transitions into annuals, nad eventually perennials or forested areas.
Simply put, weeds should naturally recede and be replaced by the products of healthier soil such as grasses, clovers, wildflowers etc. If the soil is continually disturbed, or the plants that would naturally inhibit weed growth are removed (weeding),then weeds will continually sprout up to do what they do best, attempt to rehab the environment.
Hop Growth
The results of letting the hops run wild were varied. As I suspected, the robustness of the hops seem primarily tied to the soil. The south side of my grass lawn plot, when I initially tilled this past spring, was very hard, comprised of clay and a very thin topsoil. The 10 rhizomes planted in this area, regardless of variety, grew anywhere from poor to fair, and from 1-6 feet in length. Compare this to the north side of the plot where 3 of 10 have produced cones, and the shortest growth is at roughly 6 feet.
I was made aware by my house's previous owner that the ground on the north side of my property had been tilled and covered in compost for the purposes of a large vegetable garden. I noticed when tilling that area, the ground was much easier to turn over and plant. The soil had a much darker, earthier color, and broke apart very easily in my hands. I belive this aided in drainage, water retention, root establishment, and the health of the soil ecosystem that the south side of the plot did not have available initially.
Some of the most vigorous, healthy hop bines are located directly beneath by neighbors' huge maple tree to the north. I had heard that hops needed a ton of sunlight (8-10 hours daily? Fact check on that), but these ladies are 10-12 feet this first season with about 4-6 hours of sunlight daily. Perhaps sunlight affects cone production more than bine growth? Can I get feedback on that?
The final results of this first year are as follows:
20 rhizomes planted
20 rhizomes sprouted
20 rhizomes survived the year with no water, fertilizer, prepared compost, pest control, weed control.
8 hops grew to a length of greater than or equal to 12' and only 1 plant growing less than 1 foot. This squirt was located in the southeast corner of the plot, subject to poor soil, and quickly overtaken by daikon radish and turnips early in the season.
2 hops produced first year cones (as of August 25, 2017), Cascade and Centennial.
Infrastructure held together, but needs some reworking.
No problem with weeds or pests
Hopefully my methods of growing large amounts of cover for the purposes of adding biomass, preserving moisture, attracting beneficial insects, and breaking up compacted clay, will increase soil health for next year. I have no idea of knowing if this was a success or not, but now we have somewhat of a baseline. I certainly have a lot of ideas for the direction I can take the EHP in the coming years. One final note, part of this whole process of "carbon farming" involves grazing animals. I live in a city which does not allow them...and my wife vetoed rabbits for this first year....so my solution is horse manure from nearby farms. I will spread it on after harvesting my winter wheat in late fall to feed all the wonderful microorganisms in my soil. I hope this can be an acceptable replacement for my lack of grazing livestock.
I hope this was a comprehensive summary for the first year of the EHP. If you have any questions, contact me directly:
Facebook: @theelginhopsproject
Search for Robert Denwood on LinkedIn
Or contact me directly by email at elginhopsproject @gmail.com
As always, thank you for reading and following along,
-EHP
