The First Hop Report for 2011

Hop growth up to June 7.

The hops are growing stronger each day this season. In mid May we went from a sunny hot week where I had to water every day. Then we went into a rainy week with little sunshine and 50° days. Now well into June we’re repeating the same weather pattern along with a F3 tornado which died about 20 miles southeast of us. With all of the water and sun the hops seem to be ahead of last year by a week and a half. The Hallertau hops, which are the first to sprout, are already almost at the top. In the past I was trimming off the smaller, weaker bines that came out of the ground to give the stronger ones the best chance to grow. This year the amount of bines that sprouted doubled, so I gave more of the shoots the chance to climb. Each line has four or five bines climbing rather than the two or three of last year.

With the publishing of last year’s article in the gadget issue of Zymurgy Magazine and the hop collaboration with A.C. Golden Brewery/Colorado Native Brewery in Colorado, I’ve had more inquires about the trellis than ever. Here is Colorado Native's webpage with my part in the project 3/4 of the way down the page. To answer all of the inquiries, I thought I’d lay out the repairs and improvements I’ve made to the trellis, remembering the motto of my trellis design:

The trellis and it's crop must be built, erected, maintained, planted and harvested by the hands of only one person.

New carriage with stain finish.

The carriage moved up and down the trellis pole well, but it briefly got stuck on the pole during the second hop harvest last fall when one side still had the Cascade hops hanging on it and the other side didn’t have any becasue the Hallertau hops had been harvested earlier. The weight of the hops on the one side caused the carriage to torque against the pole without the equal balance of hops on the other side. With that in mind, I replaced the original carriage, which dried out and cracked. It was made of rough cut cedar, which provided a great look, became brittle as the season passed and the places where the screw’s pilot holes cracked. I made end-grain-to-face joints at 90° held together by galvanized sheet rock type screws. I replaced the cedar with pine, a firmer, almost as light lumber, yet still easily workable. I mitered the 90° joints end-grain to end-grain and used some silicone caulking to prevent water infiltration into the joint hopefully preventing the cracking. I also used a medium colored penetrating oil stain to protect the lumber from the climate.



Fresh copper color paint scheme.

In rebuilding the carriage, I added more dimension to the inside measurement to improve the freedom of movement hopefully preventing the torquing. At the Hallertau harvest this season, I will add some form of balancing line to the arm on that side of the carriage to break the torque just in case it occur again.

I gave the arms a sparkling coat of Rustoeum® copper spray paint to freshen up the look and to resit the bird poop which gets left on the arms. Since that application in May, the paint has dulled a bit with the reapplication of several applications of fresh avian guano.
 

Reroping the purchase line.

Other improvements to the trellis were also made. I replaced the ⅜” cotton rope purchase line with a nice soft ⅜” nylon braided rope. The cotton line degraded in the climate and broke in the fall causing some angst. It doesn’t need to be ⅜” thick, but it is easier to grab that thickness with your hand when taking out or dropping in the carriage.


1/4" Coir twine.



I also upgraded to a ¼” thick coir twine for the hops to climb instead of the jute twine. The cost difference was negligible. The jute became brittle and it broke a couple it times in the wind last season. I had to add a bit of new jute in between the broken ends. The coir iwine is very rough and allows the bine to grab onto it easily. It will degrade as well, but with it’s thickness and stiffness it will be much heartier than the ¼” jute. It certainly resisted the winds we got during the tornado's activity better than the jute could.

On calamitous note, the solar rechargeable light on the trellis top has now ceased to shine past sundown. As the late winter nights expanded, the beacon contracted. The rechargeable batteries must have died or the photovoltaic cell on the top became damaged. Needless to say... I’m not going to shimmy up the trellis to check either of them out. I’m not to sure about leaning an extension ladder against the pole either. If I only had an equal and opposite force or a trained monkey with pants to make this repair. This is an issue that I can’t fix on my own. Note to self: no light on the top next time. It defeats the credo of self sufficiency.

Other future improvement to make when the pole rots out underground would be to cut off seven feet of the still worthwhile pole and sink that 4 feet into the ground leaving three feet above ground. Then make a plywood saddle that would be afixed to the top of the sunken pole. In that saddle a new sixteen foot 4x4 pole could be pegged, as pivot joint. Then tilted up on the pivot and pinned vertically in place. This would make the pole nineteen feet tall allowing more vertical hop growth and the ability to lower the pole by myself to fix the light, replace the hardware, re-rope the purchase line or to store the pole horizontally during the winter.

Corner bracket on carriage.

After rebuilding the carriage I noticed the other day, a bird sitting on the upper arm the other day and that they were both hanging askew. I realized that the carriage joints broke at opposing miters. So I dropped the carriage to examine both miters and determined that there wasn’t enough wood to bite between where the screw holes were drilled and the edge of the miter and that little bit of wood broke free at one joint and that the opposing joint the same way. I went out to hardware store and got some 1-1/2" corner brackets, which I screwed on all four joints of the carriage and the repair was made.  I wish I had taken time to spray the brackets with copper paint, but I wanted to get the job done tout suite.

All in all, this project continues to be a great source of enjoyment.