Hello and welcome to my latest project! For many years, I've appreciated the fine art of crafting beer and have long considered giving home brewing a shot. However, my interest carried me more into the consumption end of the hobby and there it remained.
About a month ago, my neighbor started talking to me about how they wanted to start growing hops in their backyard. For whatever reason, this sounded like a good idea to me. They have a friend who home brews and they were going to grow the hops as an ornamental vine (hops look great for landscaping!) and then harvest them for their friend at the end of the season.
I went through all my gardening catalogs and checked online about where I could pick up some hop rhizomes that I could plant in my yard. Surprisingly, there are plenty of places to get them at. After doing some research about different varieties and what would grow best in my zone, I decided to go ahead and order.
I decided that for my first year, I would start out small and see how it goes - so I went to http://freshops.com and ordered Cascade (a high-yielding American type hop), Kent Golding (a good English-style hop), and Magnum (a bitter German hop) hops for my, well, I'll call it my hop garden.
That was my first step and I expect for the rhizomes to arrive in the mail shortly.
My next step was to prepare the area where the hops would grow. It's just like prepping any other area for gardening. I got some new gardening soil for a raised gardening bed I built las summer. Sorry, no tomatoes this year, but it's perfect for growing hops! I've built a trellis so the plants can climb and give the side of my house an ornamental look once I train the vines to climb.
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