Ah yes, buds on the trees, grass turning green, tulips blooming, lawnmowers, robins, girls in skimpier outfits... wait.. oh right.. HOPS ARE COMING UP! I noticed about a week ago that some small little hop bine fingers were just starting to poke up out of the ground, and since then they've done what hops do... grow FAST. They've been poking up about an inch further a day at this point, much faster than last years first year growth. Last April I planted Cascade and Hallertau rhizomes and got a pretty decent harvest off the Cascades but virtually nothing from the Hallertau. I'm noticing this year however that the Hallertau is rocking at a pretty steady clip with multiple bines popping up as opposed to last years one. Cascades are abundant as expected after last seasons 27 feet of vertical growth, they're looking great.
Today I got some new rhizomes from Jim at Liberty Street Brewing Co. and immediately took them home and dug a new area to plant them. I figured the sooner the better since the others are already so big. He gave me 2 Tettnanger and 2 Nugget rhizomes that looked like small trees. The ones I bought last year were just little 5 inch long twigs with one or two shoots on them, and by comparison Jim's are ridiculous. Apparently they were recently cut from 15 year old crowns and looked prehistoric. I ended up planting these in an area on the northeast corner of my house where I will run twine up to the roof for them to crawl up. I figured my wife would be furious about the location but was pleasantly surprised when she was only a little upset. =D These already have some pretty good shoots on them so I planted them with a bit of these popping up above the surface, they should catch up to my second years pretty quickly.
As you can probably tell I get pretty excited about my hops and felt their emergence warranted a blog post complete with the hipstamatic-ish photos and all. I'll post more pics later in the year when they are starting to get those glorious cones. Thank you to Jim for the new specimens for my collection, much appreciated! I can't wait to brew another homegrown IPA, (hopefully a bit more IPAish this time around) with these new varieties, also to see them climb up to my roof from my rose garden. God I love summer!
Love the blog. Only thing I have a problem with is it's hard to read with the funky type. Great for the Subject line, difficult when reading more than one line of type.
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