HOPS – an engineering degree finally put to good use

How is the hops garden doing this year, you didn’t ask? Well, let me tell you! But first, I want to get out of the way a few of the questions you are bound to ask, as I’ve learned from experience:

1. Why did you decide to grow hops?
   • We didn’t decide to grow hops, we inherited a hops plot from the previous owners of our house. They loved their hops, and, to the best of my knowledge, even had it genetically tested and found to be “wild loyalist hops” originally introduced by Loyalist Pioneers to Canada.
2. What do you do with the hops?
   • At the moment, we give a bunch away to my brother-in-law, who makes his own beer, but after that we still have a massive amount left over. The massive remainder is up for grabs. I might try a few things this year … tea, infusions, seasonings, etc. We’ll see.
3. Will you give me some root stock?
   • Do I know you? The answer to your question is the same as the answer to mine.

Alrighty! Let’s get started! For the past three summers, the hops have grown wild in an uncared-for patch of garden about 40 ft x 15 ft. Hops are classified as bines (not vines) and prefer to grow vertically, wrapping around fences, poles, ropes, or other plants. Many hops farms have trellises built with 20 ft poles which are strung in between with twine. When we moved in, the hops garden had two poles cobbled together from metal corner guards, and strung with a piece of clothesline. You can see the hops growing on the corner guard poles below and if you really squint you can sort of see the clothesline drooping between the poles. You can also get a sense of how overgrown the hops garden is … more of a field, really.

This year (2024) we wanted to give the hops more of a fighting chance. This meant: a) installing proper hops poles, b) finding a way to keep the wild grasses at bay, 3) planning for an easier way to harvest.

First up: new poles. We found someone willing to sell us four poles, so we borrowed a trailer and a chainsaw and headed on out. We cut the poles down to 18 ft, first because we figured we’d bury them 4 ft in the ground leaving them 14 ft above ground, and second, there is a provincial law dictating what percentage of a load can overhang a trailer and this was our maximum length.

Aside: among things that never came up when we lived in the city was “how much overhang is permitted by law when I haul long-ass poles on a trailer back to my house”.

We tried very hard to find someone willing to come around and install four hops poles for us (technically, to dig the 4 ft deep holes so we could install the poles) but the hops started growing and we finally had to give up and undertake it ourselves. We rented a gas-powered auger that came with an extender and spent two days doing the worst work imaginable. We hit rocks that had to be pried out by hand using a crowbar or a post-hole digger, about 2 ft deep we hit clay that was gummy and heavy, and usually just slopped back into the hole when we tried to auger it up, and the holes themselves filled 3/4 up with water. But once we had holes (3 ft deep was all we could manage, not 4 ft), we “just” stood the poles up and then filled in around the edges with stones and clay to secure them in place. Objective #1 achieved!

Have you noticed the flaw in our game plan yet? 18 ft poles? 3 ft holes? This means the hops poles stand about 15 ft high, too tall for a pruning ladder, and putting a damper in objective #3 “planning for an easier way to harvest”. Fortunately, we had the foresight to screw in four eye hooks to each pole before we raised them. Unfortunately, we did not have the foresight to attach ropes to the hooks.

What follows is the entire and apparently only reason I went to engineering school for 5 years. Jeff had the great idea to tie ropes to slip hooks (those hooks that open/close with a slider), and attach them to the eye hooks, so that at harvest time you just unlatch them and slide the bines off the ropes. Easy peasy! Of, course, this only works if you can reach the top of the poles to do the unlatching. I modified this plan so that we would feed a pull rope through the eye hooks with a ring tied on the end, to which we could attach the slip hook. Then, with enough slack, we could raise and lower the rope to latch/unlatch the slip hook. I attached boat cleats to the poles so that once a rope was pulled tight, I used the cleat to tie it off. Photos below.

The final hurdle was just how to get the pull rope through the eye hooks. For this, I macgyvered up a long piece of thin baseboard with a cupholder hook screwed to one end and a doubly long piece of string tied to a small weight (a nut). I used the baseboard contraption to lift the nut and drop it through the eye hook, then carefully nudged it down the pole until I could reach it. I tied the end of the string to the pull rope, and eased it back through the eye hook. Considering I had to stand on a ladder to reach the top of the pole with the baseboard contraption, it was a miracle I got this to work. It also did NOT work at all if the day was windy, which is pretty much every single day here, so I really had to thread the needle in terms of weather as well.

Here are the finished poles, with the hops well on their way to winding up the ropes. I should mention that we elected to go with “teepee” style lines for the hops instead of stringing rope between the poles. It’s just easier (again, objective #3).

Next hops post: Look forward to me hating on grasses while I give myself a pretty bad case of Carpal Tunnel syndrome, and the hops reaches the top of the poles! Where will it go when it has nowhere else to climb??