It's time to start guiding the hops up the twine. We cut back the initial growth and now they've bounced back and are ready to grow vertically.

So, how do I decide which bines get to grow and which get cut? I look for a good number of leaves that have no yellow or brown (cutting back the initial growth helps with this). I don't want them too long or too short. Just looking healthy is more important than anything else.

The other important factor is where they are in relation to the lower cable that the drip irrigation hangs. I want them as directly underneath the cable as possible so the water gets to the plants. It also makes it easier to mechanically weed.

I wind two or three bines up each set of strings. You'll hear people say that you should wind clockwise. That means you wind as though you're looking at the plant from above. I guess you can also think of the righty-tighty rhyme for tightening nuts.

Once I've done this, I cut back the rest of the plant.

In the end, it should look well groomed. Little shoots may come up over time and one or two more may sneak up the strings, and that's OK. The strength of the plant will still be concentrated into just a few bines.

Collect the vegetables in single layer in a pan. Drizzle a tablespoon or two of olive oil and sprinkle with herbs, pepper, and a little salt. I use an Italian seasoning mix that I found in this book.* You can use any mix you like, but I find that Italian-style mixes work well with almost any vegetables.

Bake the vegetables for 20 to 40 minutes and stir at the half-way point. The duration depends on the type of vegetables you're cooking and their size. Asparagus only takes about 10 minutes. Pierce the vegetables with a fork to determine when they're done to your liking. I like my vegetables well-cooked and the onions caramelized and sweet.

We usually have plenty of leftovers and I add them omelets or make a quick soup for lunch by adding them to homemade chicken broth (thanks, Lorna Sass, for giving me permission to simplify this process).

Now that I've figured out a way I like squash, can anyone tell me a decent way to fix Brussels sprouts?

*I use this Italian seasoning on everything. Omelets, all vegetables, in soups and spaghetti sauce. I make it with the optional red pepper flakes, so it has a little kick. Buy the book, get a pressure cooker. 

The Columbus hops are starting to leaf out. The photo above looks like lush foliage, but you can see how small the shoots really are in the shot below. The maple-leaf mulch gives an  idea of scale.

Finding the shoots under the mulch is an exciting treasure hunt. Someone else from the club was raking the mulch away and exclaimed every time he found shoots--so it's not just me.

While my co-worker was raking, I was cutting back multiflora rose. It's been overtaking the back forty of our plot and we need to reclaim the space. Behind the wall of noxious roses, there's a pile of cinder blocks that I want to use as the base of a bench. I have a goal. I think I can get there tomorrow.

Besides the thrilling progress of the hops, we have more surprising growth in the garden. 

I briefly stopped by the garden to take drop off a new wheelbarrow and unload the weed cloth that's been taking up the back of the truck. I was happy to see that the sprouts that we uncovered the other day survived the cool, wet nights.

The shoots are getting darker. You can see above the color change between Tuesday and Thursday. Below is the same rhizome as in the previous post.

It's a great time of year to be out in the garden. There's always something new to see--and it isn't too hot yet.

Yesterday I sent a request out to my home brewing club asking for help in the hop yard for the season. I think I have enough knowledge to share that it will be beneficial to everyone. I was able to give an overview of the garden and work involved to five volunteers. Five other people--how am I going to keep everyone busy??? 

It turned into a gorgeous day and one of the guys came ready to work, so we cleared the leaf mulch away from the plants. 

I really didn't think we'd find anything and then, lo and behold, hop shoots!

How can you tell the hop shoots from other growth (weeds)? You can see that the tops have pinkish tips. In the photo below, you can see a pinkish band around the stalk. 

Non-hops plants that are coming up under the leaves are either completely white or green. As they leaf out, the hops will get redder, then turn green.

Hops shoots are edible and some commercial growers harvest them to sell to restaurants. It doesn't affect the final harvest. Only one or two shoots/bines are selected grow up each string, so the rest may as well be put to good use.

We were surprised at how many rhizomes were at the surface. Here, you can see the buds emerging from one of them.

It's supposed to rain over the next few days, so we probably won't be back out in the garden until next week. I can't wait to see how things have progressed.

I'm going to a hops growing workshop this week and it's making me itch to get in the hops garden I run for my home brewing club. The garden is dormant, so I took some photos of the PVC trellis instead. 

This plot is in a community garden and I initially wanted a trellis that could be pulled up if needed. I also wanted something lightweight that I could install myself. If I recall, our club president at the time, Kevin, came up with this design and it's still standing almost four years later with only a couple of modifications.

We were constrained by materials that are available at our local hardware stores, so we decided on 10-foot trellises. This works out fine because the tallest ladder I can carry in my truck allows me to reach 10 or 11 feet in the air. 

As it turns out, the coir twine I buy to string up the hops is just the right length to toss over the 10-foot wire. The relatively short height of the trellis may impact our yield, but for now we're focusing on good management practices instead. Besides, it doesn't do us any good to have hops reaching up to the sky if we have no way to harvest them.

This trellis is in no way heavy duty. There are nine plants that grow up it and it doesn't need to carry a heavy load. If you're looking for designs that require winches and telephone poles, click back to Google and on to the next site.

Here you can see the basic concept. It's a 8-foot green metal fencepost (studded T-post according to the receipt) with a 2-inch, 10-foot PVC pipe sleeve. We drove the fencepost into the ground by pounding the pipe on the flared metal piece at the bottom of the post. (I should've worn ear plugs when I did this because it was loud.) The post is in the ground about 12-18 inches and that has held fine in our clay soil.

The upper cable is strung through the middle two poles by simply drilling a hole through the PVC. I capped the PVC to keep critters and water from getting in. 

This is one of the end poles. I used an eye bolt that's long enough to thread through the PVC and secured with a nut and lock washer. 

The cable is secured on the top of the 6-foot wooden fenceposts between us and our neighbor gardens. On the right side of the photo above, you can see one of the U-bolts we use to adjust the tension. I thought I'd lower the cable to harvest, but the different varieties mature at different times, so the only time the cable is lowered is when I'm cleaning up at the end of the season.

We used the fenceposts instead of securing the cable guy-wire style in the ground because of the size restriction of our garden. It would be a safety hazard (tripping and garroting) to angle the cable in the ground. The neighbors' fenceposts are cemented in the ground and are very secure.

So, the picture above illustrates what you might expect with poles that aren't cemented in the ground. The hops-laden cable pulled the post a bit. This happened the first year before I had the cable secured on the wood fenceposts. Believe it or not, it's pretty stable. If it bothers anyone, they don't have to look at it. There's plenty of weeding to do instead.

The main drawback of this system is the cost. The green fenceposts we used were pretty heavy-duty and cost $15 each ($60). The PVC pipes were $7.40 each ($30) and the 1/8-inch cable was $18. All the other bits and pieces added about $10. Our wood trellises ended up being cheaper, even with using a bag of cement in each hole.

I was able to get all the materials at Kendall's Hardware in Clarksville, Maryland. I didn't go to a big-box store because Kendall's had the sturdy T-posts and they have an excellent selection of hardware (eyebolts, etc.). 

This is a good system if you only have a few plants, you don't want to dig holes, you need to install it yourself, or you don't want a permanent trellis. As I said above, four years out, this is holding up pretty well and I think it's a pretty elegant design.