The Hops Have Landed!

While others may be celebrating the landing of the Mars Rover "Curiosity" the Limestone Creek Brewing Co. is ecstatic over the landing of our first plants in the test site!

"Mounding" the old fashioned way (not!)

These are the virus indexed stock plants we purchased through NeHA and the Cornell Cooperative Extension and include Newport and Fuggle varieties.  Being so late in the season we just want to get them in the ground so they can establish themselves for next growing season.  We expect our first abundant crop of hops in 2015 from this planting.

As you can see below, I created a temporary trellis system off of our permanent hop poles to give them a little growing room through the rest of the summer and into the fall.  Now, if only we can keep the ridiculously large deer population from eating them all before they get comfortable!  Any ideas?

Hops in the ground and ready to climb

Test Field Bravo

Bob and I finally found a day we could both devote some time to the raising of the trellis system, so we brought out the heavy equipment and raised some poles.  Bob figured out the post hole digger attachment after a little experimentation; he dug holes while I prepped the poles by cutting to 21' and drilling holes in top to run the trellis cable through next spring.

The "inaugural" hop pole (looking NW toward the future Oast house)

As you can see, we off-centered the poles in this row - once we have the hop yard laid out there will be free-floating cables running between the cable supports. The free-floating cables will have the hop "bines" running up to them for their top support.

Riley and Bob providing comic relief

The soil in this spot is pretty much perfect - we assume it was farmed at some point in the recent past based on the lack of rocks alone. This will be considered the test yard mostly because beyond the 1.5 - 2 acres of good soil we have mostly very large limestone boulders right up to the surface.  However, these make great landscaping tools that will add to the scenery once we have the Oast and visitor center built!

Thumbs up!

Name on the books!  "Limestone Creek Brewing Co."  Are you down with the LCB?