I Love Hops
You can just see the mark I made (a bit below where the stem appears from behind the upright) which was how high the hops plant was at 5 o'clock yesterday evening. This was taken at about 7:30 the next morning. The upright is about 1.5" wide. All that growth - about 4" - in 14 hours. In the dark. Hooray for hops.
posted by Wornoutmorgan at 7:33 PM
4 Comments:
When I say this I'm gonna sound like a big, fat world traveler but I'm not. When we were in Slovenia, I noticed they have the most amazing farms. Beautifully cared for and tended. Just beautiful. When we were driving down from the border near vienna there were fields of hops. Acre after acre of tall canopies draped in hops. Fifteen feet high poles? I dunno, it was amazing. I would love to have stopped and walked through just to enjoy the smell and views under the hops. I really had no idea how they were grown. Fresh hops in homebrewing makes all the difference in the world, that I know.
Yeah, they get to be 18 to 20 feet, some varieties. We've tried to grow hops a couple of times, but they keep dying. I think it gets too cold for them here, though just a bit further south used to be a hops region, long ago. So maybe we're just doing something wrong. Or perhaps it's the fungus that killed all the old vines and put an end to the hops farms, still lingering in the soil. I adore the smell of hops; I'd love to have a whole field them in front of the house (downwind!).
It's almost at the top of the frame thing now, I'll get a new pic up when it gets there. Lots of shoots coming up from below as well. Im going to grow barley and malt it myself one day - I can't wait to look out over my own field of beer.
Is that a good name for a film? "Field of Beer."
If you grow it, they will come. With buckets.
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