The Champagne of Blogs

Hanging out at Dave’s on the Fourth of July, it’s always too hot and too sunny. The best refuge? Under the cool and shady pergola covered in hops. And this past summer, when the missus and I went looking to buy our first house, a sunny spot for growing hops was on my short-list of must-haves. Also on that list: roof and walls. Growing hops has been somewhat of a dream since I first started brewing.

I read up on growing hops with a few books from the library, including:

Homebrewer’s Garden by Joe and Dennis Fisher
Homegrown Hops by David R. Beach

And basically what I learned was this: It needs to be sunny, it needs to be moist. Also, I learned that hops are grown from rhizomes, which are roots that start to spread out a bit over the years. My neighbors, God love ‘em, were excited by my hop farming, but not at all at the prospect of little hop bines (vine shoots) popping up in their yard every spring.

To constrain the underground colonization of the hope, I decided on raised beds for the hops. And since our backyard is going to turn into a shady courtyard, I put ‘em up front, on the northern flank to take full advantage of the southern sun.

There were some other planning considerations, shared here because I’m growing these near my home rather than in a proper, rural hop yard.

• Hops come down in the winter. Noted because we wanted to grow the hops along a yet-to-be-built front fence. The missus wanted something evergreen on the front fence, so the hop fence was scratched.
• Because hops come down in the winter and a naked trellis looks lame in the front yard, I’m building a removable bamboo trellis (more on that in the next post sometime… “soon.”)
• And finally, yes, hops come down in the winter. And an empty raised bed in the front of the house looks really lame. So I built terraced raised beds so we can have other plants. As well, we’ll plant in the ground around the raised beds.

Here’s Amanda’s sketch of the terraced beds. I wanted three beds, but it was her idea to turn them 45 degrees and make it a single structure. Pretty damn cool, in my estimation.

The next step was figuring out how the damn thing would be built. I am the least mechanically inclined man in America, so this was no small feat. Basically, I used tracing paper over some grid paper to figure out about how the boards should line up to give it sort of an overlapped-look. If you look closely, you’ll see little tails coming off each board. That’s how I kept the overlapped thing straight. I suppose I could’ve mitered it, but I don’t have a chop saw and, again, I am an idiot when it comes to building things.

So basically, I built a three-tier raised bed. I bought 2×6 cedar in 10 foot lengths. The plan is based on a 2.5 foot box, so the 10 foot lengths let us rip in basically four lengths: 30 inches, 60 inches, 90 inches and 28.5 inches. You’ll see a cut list next to each tier. Note, however, the top tier ended up with two little defects:

We basically just nailed some scrap 2×2 posts to keep that top, middle corner (front and back) attached. Duh. Pretty? No. But it’s still standing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After ripping the cedar, we laid the thing up in the garage to make sure it would actually fit together. It did.

That was enough for one day.

Sunday, I got up and measured out the spot in the yard, and I dug up the sod. Sod is surprisingly heavy if you’ve never moved it.

After that, I started nailing the boards together. The first tier went very quickly. I would recommend two things after nailing together the first tier.

1: Add the posts. Add as many posts as you’d like. This will help keep your raised beds square. If you don’t, and you just try to lay the second tier on top, you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking you messed up the measurements. You didn’t. It’s just not square. Trust me on this.

2: Carry your bottom tier into the yard, and make sure it fits in the hole you cut in the sod. Make adjustments as necessary so that it lays flat.

After that, go to town. I considered using screws, and probably would next time if I had better gear. But instead, I used galvanized patio nails. They won’t rust, and they have a little twist to them to keep them in place. I also used a few Simpson brackets to reinforce where one board met another at a perpendicular angle.

In hindsight, I should’ve put posts at every corner. I didn’t. We’ll see how that goes.

But soon enough, bada-boom, bada-bing, it was done.

The next weekend, we took Dave’s truck to buy 1.5 cubic yards of top soil mix (which included sand for drainage). We unloaded it into the beds, along with some extra mushroom compost our neighbors bought. Important safety note: when the soil dudes dump 2 yards of rotten manure into your truck, roll up your windows or you risk a mouthful of awful.

While at Steinbart’s to get the rhizomes, I must’ve gone back and forth from the freezer to the checkout stand 10 times. I could not make a decision on which three varieties I wanted. Ultimately, FINALLY, I settled on Willamette, Cascade, and Magnum.

I soaked the ground, then planted them. That was last weekend. I’ve been in Idaho since then, but I’ll assume nothing’s happened yet. Next job? Bamboo ladders for the hops to climb, as well as the attachments to the bed.

Update: See the homegrown hops and the fresh hop ale recipe in a very, very delayed post. You’ll also find some hop growing tips in a different post.