My husband enjoys all things beer – drinking it, making it, the experience and aesthetics of it. He always wanted to grow hops, but I said no for years. The plants are aggressive in a garden, I’ve seen them take up entire beds. But then a friend showed me her hops and gave me tips on keeping them in check.
So, for D’s birthday a few years back we got him a Humulus lupulus ‘Willamette’ plant (for readers not from the Northwest, it’s pronounced wuh-LA-mit). Willamette is a versatile hop that’s used in a range of beer styles including porters and IPAs.
70-75% of America’s hops are grown around Yakima, Washington! D and I took a day trip out to the Yakima valley recently, and stopped to peek at the hop farms. The structures for the plants are ingenious, it’s incredibly cool! Here is a History Link article about the hop industry in Washington. There’s also a hop museum in Toppenish, which is worth the visit for the intro video alone.
Hops are easy to grow in the Northwest, either as an ornamental or for harvest. I do recommend growing them in a pot or other contained area. We had ours in a whiskey barrel and in three years the hop roots had escaped where the wood had rotted. So either add bamboo barrier or root prune them frequently to keep them from spreading. I expect to repot and root prune ours every three years.
Being climbers, hops need a structure of some sort. On farms they are grown straight up on towering twine structures, reaching about 20’. To keep ours reachable, we installed three posts around the pot. In spring we choose three vigorous stems (called “bines”) and wind them on twine so that they climb in a triple-helix shape. They do still overflow the top of the 7’ posts, but not by much.
Hops need regular moisture in the summer, particularly in containers. Most other maintenance is to the vines: cutting new basal shoots and redirecting your bines if they meander. The plants are herbaceous, so you can cut them to the ground after harvest in fall. (In fact, commercially they cut down entire bines at harvest, twine and all.) Note that some people develop a skin rash from touching hop vines and leaves, so keep the gloves on.
Hop cones are genuinely beautiful! You can tell they’re ready to harvest when they are dry and papery. They’re easy to harvest, just cut the whole cone off the plant. You can hand-pick them, but they are sticky with the lupulin you want, so you’ll lose some of that goodness. If D isn’t using the fresh hops (ideally the same day as picked), we dry them in our dehydrator (95º for 8-9 hours). Once done, we weigh and vacuum seal them and store them in our freezer. (You’ll have to do research elsewhere on how to brew beer, I just enjoy the results.) Heads up, drying hops indoors will make your space smell like a combo of beer and weed for a few days.
Growing hops has been a really satisfying project for us. If you are inclined to try it and keep them in check, I’m hop-timistic you’ll be well rewarded!
Soil and Cellar 