The Hop Yard: Selecting a Site
Growing hops is not like growing lettuce—a series of cycles of sowing and reaping during which change can be made. A hop yard is a permanent thing, like a vineyard or an orchard, except taller. Much, much taller. The location needs to be right because planting a hop is a long-term commitment. Hops don’t like to move around. If you decide to move an established hop plant, not only are you going to have a heck of a time getting it to stop growing in the place you don’t want it anymore, but in the place you want to move it to, you will essentially start from scratch while it regrows its root system.
When thinking about location, think big. Remember you can’t crowd hops. Hops are normally planted a distance of 3 feet (0.9 meter) apart, and when full grown they will fill the space. What fits in your hand as a rhizome grows as high as a standard telephone pole if all goes well once planted. The enormous underground root systems that fuel that growth need plenty of space as well. So the most important thing you can do before you put a hop in the ground is take some time to think ahead. The more hops you want to plant, the longer you have to plan.
The first thing you must do when establishing a hop yard is identify your goals. What do you want out of this? Are you a gardener who wants to experiment with an interesting plant or perhaps a permaculturist who wants to add the hop to one of your plant guilds? Are you a home brewer who wants to grow your own ingredients to make beer with? Maybe you are a homesteader who wants to grow hops for food, beer making, and medicine. Or are you a farmer who wants to sell hops commercially? If so, how much money are you trying to make growing hops? Will hops be your only crop or one element of a diversified farm? Your goals will define the size of the space you will need—a few square feet, the backyard, 1 acre, 10 acres, or 20 or more. Once you determine how many plants you need, you can determine how much space you need, and you can begin to look at your location options.
Hop plants are perennials, meaning they come back year after year. Reaching maturity at three years old, the plant produces an enormous mass of vegetation each season.
Because the hop plants are so large and heavy, they need support to reach their full size and produce the maximum harvest.
Space Considerations for Home-Scale Growers
Certainly, growing hops for your own use doesn’t demand a great number of plants. Most home growers get by nicely with anywhere from one to five plants. But you still need to think carefully about where to establish those plants.
Hops are a great addition to a garden, but because they are a perennial and difficult to move, it is important to give them their own space and plenty of it.
Hops want to climb. Installing a pole at the corner of the garden with a horizontal board at the top allows you to run several lengths of twine from the top of the pole to the ground. Once you train the bine to climb the strings the plant will take off. Illustration by Dahl Taylor
If you are thinking about planting hops in your garden, don’t do it. Plant the hops somewhere else. When we first started growing hops as gardeners, it initially seemed to make sense to plant a hop in the herb garden outside the kitchen door. Hops are herb-like in that you can cook with them and use them for medicinal purposes. We envisioned the hop growing up the side of the house, hiding the electrical meter and the wire that ran to it. And grow up the side of the house it did. It also sent out a never-ending onslaught of roots, shoots, and runners under the ground that popped up everywhere and began to climb everything in an effort to colonize the entire herb garden, seizing territory even from the aggressive Kentucky mint and lemon balm that had long dominated the region.
It took us several years to successfully eradicate that hop plant. During this time we were forced to relocate the herbs, for their own protection, to a raised bed just inside the vegetable garden fence. Then, frustratingly, Dieter planted a salvaged hop rhizome in the new herb garden because he thought it would be nice to have the hop growing along the fence. Once again the battle ensued. Eventually we triumphed, this time not by killing the hop but by strictly training it to grow up a single tall pole that Dieter put in at the corner of the garden by aggressively and continuously cutting all shoots that come up anywhere else year in and year out. Over a period of about seventeen years the hop seems to have come to prefer the pole and, although it still sends out runners in the spring, it is not as big of a problem as it once was. In fact this mature plant is quite majestic and a great addition to the garden, provided we remain vigilant.
If you are going to plant a hop in a pot, use the largest and deepest size possible. Remember, though, that you will have to be able to move the pot indoors in the winter—so don’t get something so heavy that you can’t lift it when it is full of dirt. Depth is going to be much more important than width, since the hop will be trained to grow vertically. Make sure to use a plastic pot, not clay. Not only is plastic lighter to carry, it is not porous, so it will better hold the moisture in the soil. Your pot should have a hole in the bottom for drainage, which can be improved by placing a layer of gravel or small stones in the bottom of the pot.
Fill the pot with a blend of potting soil and compost, but do not overfill. Leave about 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) between the lip of the pot and the surface of the soil. This will prevent water from running off the surface of the soil and out of the pot during watering or rain. If you are planting a rhizome, bury it lengthwise about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) or so below the surface of the soil. If you are potting a plant, simply insert its root-ball into the soil. Tamp down the surface of the soil lightly, but do not compact it. Let the soil remain fairly loose.
During the growing season your potted hop will need to be outdoors in full sunlight. Hops need a lot of water but do not want to sit in water. For this reason do not put a saucer under the pot, but instead let the water drain freely out the bottom. Water your hop early in the morning and at the end of the day to minimize evaporation. During the height of summer you will probably need to water more. You may also want to consider protecting the potted roots from the heat by wrapping the pot in insulation so that it doesn’t become too hot. Another possibility would be setting the pot in a cooler with some ice packs.
Bines grow up a balcony railing on an urban high-rise. The grower uses the hops to make her own beer, which she brews in her apartment.
Fire escapes come in handy when bines start growing. If allowed, just train the plant up one of the stair rails of your fire escape. That way all you have to do to harvest the cones is climb up and down the stairs. Balcony railings also work nicely. If you live more than a couple of stories up, the wind may be a factor. Often urban streets with tall buildings function as wind tunnels. Make sure your bines are securely fastened. Although hop growers typically use twine to tie up hop bines, you may want to use something wider and less abrasive, such as strips of cloth, so that if the wind whips the bine against its ties it will be less likely to snap.
If you don’t have a fire escape or a balcony, place your potted hop near the side of the building. Attach string to the building about 6 feet (1.8 meters) above the hop, and train the bine to grow up the string. If you are unable to attach string to the building, you can purchase a piece of lattice to lean against the building and let the hop climb that. If your neighbors are willing, you can also put the pot on the sidewalk next to a lamppost or a street sign and let the hop climb the pole. Of course you will have to prune the hop so that it does not cover the streetlamp or sign at the top of the pole.
Remember to bring the pot inside in the winter. The pot will not be enough protection from extreme cold, and the roots will freeze, killing the plant. Because hops need to go dormant you will have to overwinter it in a dark place between 32 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit (0 and 4.4 degrees Celsius).
Hops can be grown in pots, but because the space for the roots is limited they will not become as large as a hop planted in the ground.
City Hops
In answer to a question many urban home brewers have asked us, yes, you can grow hops in the city— just don’t expect to produce enough hop cones to supply the local brewpub on the corner! From a hop plant’s perspective the great thing about an urban environment is that there are lots of places to climb: think lampposts, fire escapes, skyscrapers. The bad thing about the city for hops is that there is essentially no ground—as in soil. Another issue is that because of the density of high buildings there is limited sunlight unless you are on a rooftop, where you’ll also need to take the lack of soil and the plant’s potential weight into account.
If you want to put a hop in a flower pot and grow it on a fire escape, go for it. Just make sure you aren’t violating any local ordinances, and get permission from your landlord first. Hops can also be planted in community gardens and parks as long as everyone involved understands that the hop is going to get really big, come back every year, and take a small army of weeders and pruners to prevent it from taking over the place.
Incorporating Hops into Permaculture Settings
As a multiple-use perennial, hops are a great plant for permaculture gardens. Devote some ground to hop plants and, with the right support system, you can take advantage of 20-plus feet (6.1-plus meters) of previously unused vertical growing space. Creative use of trellising can also create shade for plants and people on the ground.
Hops can climb on living things, such as trees. Forest garden expert Martin Crawford recommends letting hops climb the southern side of large trees. The sides of buildings and trellis systems also make excellent structures for hops. In terms of getting along with other plants, hops are most useful for protecting shade-loving plants on the ground from the sun during the height of summer. Using wire or trellising, hops can be trained to grow horizontally or on a diagonal to form a shelter for plants or even people. Some hop growers have even built trellises in the shape of gazebolike shelters that the hops will enclose in greenery, creating a shady hideaway for summer afternoons.
Hops can also be a very effective element for landscaping around a house built on passive solar design principles. Southern exposures maximized to provide heat during the winter can be shaded by a row of fast-growing hop bines during the summer. When summer ends it is time to harvest the hops anyway. Simply cut the hop bines down to allow the sun back in as the weather cools. Maybe you can make a side profit off the hop cones or at least a little home brew.
Growing hops along a trellis structure crafted in the dimensions of a gazebo can create a shady retreat during the hot summer months. Illustration by Dahl Taylor
A Brewer’s Garden
A few hop plants go a long way. If you are a home brewer, calculate how many ounces of dried hop flowers you will need for the amount of beer you plan to brew over the course of the year. Most recipes for home-brewed beer call for only a couple of ounces of dried hops. Depending on the variety of hops, once a bine reaches maturity it will produce between 6 and 7 pounds (2.7 to 3.2 kilograms) of fresh hop cones that will dry down to about 1 or 2 pounds (0.5 to 0.9 kilogram). Since hops grow vertically they don’t need a huge amount of space on the ground and, with a proper trellis system, can be so productive you may not need many bines.
Because hops grow fast in the summer and die back in the winter, they are a great tool in passive solar design. Plant a row of hops on the south side of a building, and grow them up to the eaves. They will shade the building from the hot summer sun. Cut them down at the end of the summer, and let the sun shine in during the winter months to provide warmth. Illustration by Dahl Taylor
Over the years people have developed many different designs for hop yards, and of course small-scale plantings of five to ten bines for the home brewer or homesteader can be improvised by making use of existing structures and materials. The basic principles are the same whether growing hops on a small or commercial scale. The hops must grow upward, the higher the better, and have a support system strong enough to hold their weight at maturity. The material that the bines actually wrap themselves around should be made of something strong yet biodegradable that can be cut down at harvest time along with the bine. The bines must have a lot of space between them—at least 3 feet (0.9 meter)—so they don’t become entangled.
Here are some simple trellising options for small-scale growers.
• Create a trellis off the side of a building by running string or twine on a diagonal from the upper reaches of the building and anchoring it in the ground. For attaching to the building, tie the string or twine to an eyebolt screwed into the side of the building. Make sure this setup is strong enough to support about 100 pounds (45.4 kilograms). Even at full maturity the bine itself will not exceed a weight of 50 pounds (22.7 kilograms), but the extra weight capacity should provide for a rain-soaked hop bine being buffeted about in a storm. Anchor the line in the ground about 3 feet (0.9 meter) from the building using a stake.
• Erect a single pole, nail a horizontal board to the top of it to create a T shape, and (depending on the length of the horizontal board) run two or four strings from the top of the pole to the ground. The post should be at least 16 feet (4.9 meters) high, and to install it you’ll have to dig a posthole 3 feet (0.9 meter) deep and bury the bottom of the pole in it to secure it in place. Again, anchor your strings to the ground with stakes to support the eventual weight of the hops.
• Erect a micro hop yard composed of a short row of four poles, anchored to the ground by cables, with a single wire running along the top to support several bines. Even though the hop trellis system is small in a micro yard, it should still be tall. Because the system will carry less weight, it does not have to be as strong as a fullscale hop yard trellis system. You want your poles to be at least 16 feet (4.9 meters) high, but you do not have to bury them as deep. Burying your poles at a depth of 3 feet (0.9 meter) will suffice. Put the poles 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart. Nail a 10-foot-long (3-meter-long) board to the tops of the poles, with supports coming off the top of each pole. Run cable from the top of the pole to the ground, where you can anchor it with a stake.
Hops grown on a small scale depicted here will provide a home brewer with an ample harvest. Illustration by Dahl Taylor
Whatever the small-scale design used, it is important to remember to leave as much space between hops at the top of the trellis as possible so that the bines do not become intertwined with each other. This makes it difficult to cut down the individual bines. It also creates a dense mass of vegetation that prevents the evaporation of moisture, creating a humid environment conducive to disease.
Picking hops by hand from a standing bine makes for a stronger hop plant. Because the cones are removed but the bine is left standing, the vegetation can continue to photosynthesize for the remainder of the growing season, generating energy that can be stored in the root system for the following spring.
Because different styles of beer call for different varieties of hops, you will probably want to have several varieties to choose from; that means that even if you only plan to do a few batches, you will have to have more than one hop plant—but remember that the more bines you have, the more work you will have to do to take care of them. It is also important to take into account how much time you will have during the growing season to dedicate to the hops. Hop plants can be pretty high maintenance, especially in the spring and early summer. Poor care will reduce the yield. If you want to maximize the amount of hop cones you harvest, don’t go crazy and plant more hops than you can handle.
Although it is fun to try lots of different hop varieties when home brewing, keep in mind that not all varieties grow well in all areas of the country. Growers in the eastern United States will want to stick with varieties that do well in a more humid climate. Although an obsession with many, home brewing is still supposed to be a hobby, and presumably you have a job. Try integrating hops into a brewer’s garden that includes grains, herbs, and even small fruits such as berries that can all be used to brew beer made exclusively with homegrown ingredients.
Siting the Commercial-Scale Hop Yard
If you are going to try to make some money growing hops you are going to need a hop yard. A hop yard can be on a piece of land as small as 1/4 acre (0.1 hectare) or it can be hundreds of acres in size. Whether large or small, a hop yard involves not just the plants in the ground but an elevated trellis system composed of poles and cable along with irrigation at ground level. With a hop yard as little as 1/2 acre (0.2 hectare) in size, you can produce a volume of hops sufficient to sell to home brewers or a small brewpub. But to achieve a profit growing hops, you need to have a hop yard that is at least 1 acre (0.4 hectare) in size. A basic 1-acre hop yard contains approximately nine-hundred plants and when fully mature has the potential to produce 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms) of dried hop flowers, which currently sell for between $6 and $12 a pound depending on variety, quality, and market conditions.
The size of the hop yard will be determined by your long-term revenue and associated production goals. When calculating your production goals it is important to weigh your projected revenue against the costs of installing the trellis system, purchasing rhizomes, and acquiring the necessary equipment, such as hop-harvesting machinery and dryers. It will take five years for hop sales to repay the sizable investment involved in starting a hop yard.
How much you can afford to invest up front and how long you can wait to get paid back on your investment will be the most important factors when deciding what size hop yard you need to install in your first year. You may find it more feasible to work in stages, choosing your site to allow for expansion. Once you have determined the size hop yard you need, it is time to select the location. Because this location will be permanent, choosing the right site for your hop yard is one of the single biggest decisions you will make as a commercial hop grower. Whether you are planting one, one thousand, or ten thousand hop plants you must consider the same critical factors.
The hop yard at Foothill Hops in Munnsville, New York. Foothill Hops, established in 2001, was one of the first farms to start growing hops again in New York State. Photograph by Laura Ten Eyck.
Sun
Thinking in terms of the big, big picture—as in where on planet Earth do hops grow best—it is between 35 and 55 degrees of latitude, which in the eastern part of the United States means from Maine to North Carolina. The reason has to do with both temperature and day length. Hops need a minimum of 120 frost-free days to flower. Go any farther north and it is too cold. Hops don’t grow well near the equator because they don’t like extreme heat and need a minimum day length of twelve hours (the length of daylight at the equator is twelve hours).
Hops do like sun and need lots of it. They also require significant changes in the length of periods of light and dark during the growing season. This response to light exposure is called photoperiodism—in other words, a reaction to the amount of time spent in light or darkness. It is the same phenomenon that makes some animals change color, migrate, and hibernate as periods of light and dark change. Although it seems counterintuitive for a plant that requires so much sun, the hop is actually responding to changes in the length of the night, not the day. The hop begins to emerge from under the ground in the spring, not just because it is getting warmer but also because the nights are getting shorter. Conversely, when it comes to flowering, like the Christmas cactus the hop is what is called a “short day” plant. The hop begins to put out the sidearm shoots on which the flowers will develop in late June, just after the summer solstice, when the length of the days begins to shorten and the nights begin to grow longer.
No matter what size hop yard you are planning to install there are several critical factors, including sun exposure and drainage, that must be taken into account when choosing your location.
So if you are in the right latitude range you are basically good to go providing you have an appropriately sized piece of land that gets full sun. Any shade at all, cast by a building or nearby woods, is really not an option if you are aiming for maximum production, which you will need if you are going to make any money. The plant must have all that sun to fuel the massive amount of vegetative growth that is going to occur between the time of its emergence and the summer solstice—at which point it prepares to flower.
Maximum exposure to sunlight is a critical element when locating a hop yard. Hops need to get full sun to fuel fast growth and produce abundant and healthy hop cones.
Water
Hops have a complicated relationship with water that makes two seemingly opposite things nonnegotiable when siting the hop yard—access to a lot of water and the ability to make water go away quickly through good drainage and evaporation. On one hand, the hop’s roots need to suck up a tremendous amount of water during the growing season to hydrate the bines’ massive vegetation. On the other, the hop’s roots hate to be wet, and moisture on the surface of the hop plant’s leaves greatly increases its susceptibility to insect pests, fungus, and disease.
In our area, on average, we receive approximately 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) of rain during the growing season, a bit shy of the total amount hops need. But as any farmer in our area can tell you, the precipitation we get is often poorly timed for agricultural purposes, and with weather events made more severe by climate change, that precipitation increasingly comes in unmanageable deluges. During storms in the summer of 2014 we received as much as 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) of rain in a couple of hours. This is not good for hops. In fact, it is very bad, but it does explain why it is essential that the hop yard site and soil be well drained.
Hops need about 30 inches (76.2 centimeters) of water during the growing season. In the Northeast we usually count on receiving about 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) of rainfall during this time, which is why irrigation is essential. A single hop needs about 16 gallons (60.6 liters) of water a week. This means a 1-acre (0.4 hectare) hop yard containing approximately nine-hundred plants could need access to almost 15,000 gallons (56,781 liters) of water on a weekly basis. That is a lot of water, and if it is not coming down from the sky it must come via irrigation. When choosing your location you need to make sure that you have access to a sufficient amount of water and that you have the ability to efficiently pump this volume of water into your hop yard. Whether pumped from either a surface water source such as a pond or an underground aquifer, a ready and abundant supply of water is critical. Make sure the water supply you are relying on is naturally replenished throughout the year so that it does not run dry. Implement water conservation measures such as drip irrigation combined with mulch to prevent evaporation. Rainwater collected in aboveground cisterns and rain barrels can also be used to conserve water.
Hops are tricky when it comes to water. They need to drink a lot of it but do not like to be wet, as moisture on the vegetation is conducive to fungal disease, such as downy mildew.
Wind
As with water, hops also have a love-hate relationship with wind. Most of the reasons that hops love wind have to do with why they hate water. Summers in the East are known for long periods of tropical-like heat and humidity. These are the exact conditions in which many of the bad guys that threaten the well-being of hops thrive. As any hot, sweaty person will tell you, breeziness is a good antidote to heat and humidity. It’s called evaporation—when the breeze blows, moisture dries up. People like it when evaporation happens because it is cooling. Hops like a breeze because they like their leaves to be dry.
Wind can be both a friend and an enemy. Sited on a hill, this plant gets a good breeze, which can keep moisture out of the hop yard to help prevent disease and control insect outbreaks. But too much wind can put stress on the hop trellis system.
That being said, too much wind is not a good thing. High wind tears up the leaves of the plants and can break the bines, slowing down growth and decreasing production. Also, as the plants grow they become quite heavy. A strong wind knocking them around, especially if they are weighed down with water, takes a toll on the trellis system. If the strings holding up the hop bines are not as taut as they should be, the bines will sway, straining the trellis even more. Take typical wind speed and direction into account when you are choosing your hop yard site and orienting your trellis system. Of course, if you live on or near the property where you are considering putting your hop yard you will already have an understanding of which way the wind blows and how fast. But it might be helpful to put up a wind-sock and monitor the situation. If you want to get scientific about it you can use a remote wireless anemometer to collect some data on various sites.
Planting your hop yard at high elevation increases access to breezes and also ensures good drainage. Another advantage of a higher elevation is that your hop yard will not be in a frost valley, where cold air that can freeze young shoots settles in the spring. Consider planting your hop yard on a gentle slope. Not only does this help with drainage but it also helps with air circulation. As the temperature rises during the day, the air heats and moves upward. As the temperature cools the air in the evening it moves back down the slope. Although this air motion is so slight it cannot be detected as a breeze it still counts as air circulation that helps the hop yard stay dry.
Accessibility
Accessibility is another important factor that should not be overlooked when selecting a site for your hop yard. Growing hops is labor intensive. In addition, a hop yard requires frequent monitoring for pests and disease. It is not practical for your hop yard to be in a remote location on your farm or to be a great distance from where you live. The site should also be easily accessible for equipment such as tractors and other farm machinery.
The hop yard should be conveniently located to the hop processing area. Once the bines are cut, the cones need to be picked right away. In some cases this can be done in the field, but it is more common to pick the cones from the bines in proximity to the dryer, usually housed in a barn or other farm structure. But wherever you harvest the hops, once picked from the bine they will need to be quickly conveyed to the drying area to ensure the best quality.
Introducing livestock into the hop yard after the harvest helps control weeds and adds manure to increase fertility.
If you plan to incorporate livestock into your hop-growing operation, accessibility is also a factor. Livestock such as sheep can be helpful in controlling weeds, as well as stripping lower leaves from bines to prevent disease moving up from the ground. If livestock such as sheep or chickens will be in the hop yard at certain times, you’ll need to consider the ease of moving them in and out of the hop yard from the barn or pasture when choosing the site. If you plan to use livestock manure or compost for fertilizer, consider where the manure and compost is being collected and the ease of transporting it from there into the hop yard. One other issue to think about is where the hop yard will be located in relationship to the livestock’s wintering area. Seeds blowing into the hop yard from hay feeding stations can really add to your weed problem. When we had alfalfa sprouting in our hop yard, at first we were confused, but then we realized that we had located our hop yard directly downwind of the barnyard where our livestock wintered.
Depending on your business model, marketing may also be a factor. If you are selling hops to home brewers, or using hops to make beer commercially, it is a good idea to have your hop yard in a location that is visible to the public. We have found that people are fascinated by hop yards. Keeping the hop yard highly visible is a great marketing tool and advertisement for your product.
Previous Uses
Consider previous activities that have occurred in your prospective location. It is quite difficult to take raw ground, such as pasture or orchard, and turn it into a hop yard. The weeds and grasses will be well established, and it will take a significant amount of time and energy to eradicate them. It is easier to establish a hop yard on a field that has previously been planted in corn or some other type of cash crop such as soybeans, where the weeds have already been brought under control. If you are considering growing hops organically you will need to know if nonorganic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides have been used on the ground. If so you will need to wait three years before you can apply for organic certification.
Soil
The quality of the soil is obviously a critical consideration when siting your hop yard, yet it must be weighed alongside all of the factors described above. Although it is clearly not a good choice to plant any crop in a completely inappropriate soil type, it is worth remembering that once a hop yard is installed it is highly impractical to move it if, for example, you find that even though a location’s soil is great it is in a low area that collects water or sits smack dab in the middle of a high-velocity wind tunnel. While you can do little to change conditions such as elevation, water pooling, sun exposure, and wind direction it is within your power to improve the soil. For discussion on how to do that, and to manage the soil in a hop yard, see Chapter 4. In the meantime, keep these soil-related factors in mind when making site decisions:
• As mentioned earlier, it is critical that the soil for hops be well drained.
• It should also be deep, ideally 3 feet (0.9 meter) or more, to allow for the proper development of the hop’s root system.
• Hops do best in a medium-textured soil with good tilth—such as sandy or silty loam.
When it comes to the soil one of the most important factors is drainage. Since hops abhor standing water it is essential the soil be well drained. A healthy level of organic matter in the soil is also critical to enabling the hop plant to take up the large amount of nitrogen necessary to produce a viable crop of hop cones.
When evaluating soils, start by checking out the soil maps for your county. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which is part of the United States Department of Agriculture, maintains soil maps for over 95 percent of counties in the country. You can look at the soil maps of potential hop yard sites online. For help in understanding the maps and data, determining your soil type, and conducting a soil test, reach out to your county’s soil and water conservation district and land grant college Cooperative Extension offices.