I am also happy, but still hoppy for sure.
Grandma and @grandpa-pepper arrived in Arkansas today, and they brought me a present from one of my brothers. A brother of mine enjoyed growing hops and making homebrew, so he had some to spare. Since my parents were visiting his family prior to coming to see mine, they brought me some bags of Hops rhizomes.
My brother runs http://www.highhoppage.com/ and has been experimenting with growing different varieties. He was thinning his varieties from five kinds down to three, so he sent me the Golding and Sterling varieties.
Last year, I had received some Chinook and Cascade Hops rhizomes from him, which are still alive and well. It is so encouraging to see them breaking through the top of the soil once again.
Just because @papa-pepper doesn’t drink anymore doesn’t mean that I cannot find uses for Hops. These plants have other uses besides being a bittering and flavoring ingredient in the production of beer.
The long stems, called bines, can grow 20 – 30 feet in one season once the roots are established. They will die back at the end of the growing season, and then regrow the next year. For this reason, they can be an excellent source of shade in the summer without preventing sunlight in the winter.
Honestly, I received a lot more of the rhizomes than I was expecting. I’ll be able to plant all the Hops that I want, and still have some to share.
If you look at these rhizomes (roots), you can see the new growth (in white) already starting. This is where the bines will grow from. Hopefully, but the end of the growing season, I will have some mature Hops cones.
The part that people harvest and use are the seed cones, which are actually the flowers. It’ll be interesting to see what happened. I’ll keep you posted!
As always, I’m @papa-pepper and here’s the proof:
proof-of-papa-being-hoppy
Until next time…
FULL STEEM AHEAD!
