Expert: Ed Westemeier - 1/2/2008

Question
I have some acreage in central ontario, canada. It used to be an old cattle farm . there are several open pasture . I am contemplating stating a hops farm due to the hop's shortage I am hearing about . can you tell me where to find out more info on this

thanx rogerv

Answer
If you type growing hops into Google, you'll get quite a number of useful pages. Here are a couple:
http://www.uvm.edu/~pass/perry/hops.html
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/HopGrow.html

The big hop farms (mainly Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) use telephone poles about 100 feet apart. They run very heavy gauge wire across the tops of the poles. Hop rhizomes are planted in little "hills" about 10 feet apart. They run heavy coarse twine (coconut fibre) from stakes at each hill up to the wire. Typically, the wire is about 25 feet high off the ground, which is how high the hop plants will grow. Lots of sun and lots of water.

At harvest time, cut plants off at the ground (cutting the twine at top and bottom), bring the hops in to the drying shed, pick them and dry them, then compress them into bales.

Fairly straightforward, but I wouldn't recommend doing it on a commercial scale without first talking to the folks who buy them and arranging for support. Hopunion would be a good place to start.