Hop Trellis

Hops Trellis

Even if you're not a home brewer dealing with the hops shortage, hop plants are great to have in your garden. The trick is that they like to grow vertically up twine, so you have to rig a trellis. You can make one using scraps of soaker hose and antenna wire while taking advantage of tree trunks already in your garden.


Hops Trellis
The soaker hose is used to protect the bark (in this case of a Douglas-fir tree) from the wire. Cut the hose just long enough to go around the trunk at the height you want (higher is better) and thread a length of wire through the hose. Before tying the wire to the tree, notch the hose in each place where the twine will come up to the top of the trellis. Put s-hooks onto the wire through the notches in the hose. Set eye-hole or hooked stakes in the ground away from the base of the tree trunk and attach the twine with s-hooks through the stakes as well. The s-hooks simplify replacing the twine each season when the plant dies back.

Hops Trellis
String twine from stake to wire and back again to form the trellis. The vines readily grow up the twine and soon provide a vivid green contrast to the dark brown bark.

Hops Trellis
For a variant project, you could mount eyebolts to the side of a building to create a similar trellis. But then what would you do with your leftover soaker hose?

Thanks to my dad for taking the lush "after" pictures and letting me share his project!

5 comments

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 01:05 AM PDT Hop Trellis
Woot! I also started growing my own hops this year in Tucson. It's slow going so far and doesn't look nearly as pretty as this, but the plants look a bit more established!
-bswift5528 (screwed up login)
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 05:59 AM PDT Hop Trellis
That looks a lot better than the arrangement we have to help shade the backyard (hope to have more shade later this summer).
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 12:50 PM PDT Hop Trellis
Have all the pix gone private?
Authored by: Windell on Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 01:43 PM PDT Hop Trellis
Sorry, that's unintentional. We'll get it fixed later today.

---
Windell H. Oskay
drwho(at)evilmadscientist.com
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
Authored by: Lenore on Wednesday, June 11 2008 @ 06:03 PM PDT Hop Trellis
All fixed now!

Welcome to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. New projects are posted every Wednesday*. (*Except maybe this one.)


Bookmark EMSL

EMSL RSS Feed
Twitter: @EMSL
del.icio.us
feedburner
Feed on Google Reader
YouTube Channel

Subscribe to get new articles by E-mail:

E-mail address:


Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz

My Account





Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?

Who's Online

Guest Users: 25

Forumposts

Order: New Views Posts
Latest 5 Forum Posts
 
Re: Why don't you se..
 By:  DexterEvilGenius
 On:  Tuesday, February 09 2010 @ 06:58 AM PST
 Views 0 Replies 0
Re: Preparing to Pro..
 By:  Windell
 On:  Monday, February 08 2010 @ 09:22 PM PST
 Views 0 Replies 0
Re: Why don't you se..
 By:  Windell
 On:  Monday, February 08 2010 @ 08:58 PM PST
 Views 0 Replies 0
Preparing to Program..
 By:  bbk
 On:  Monday, February 08 2010 @ 05:42 PM PST
 Views 38 Replies 1
Why don't you send u..
 By:  DexterEvilGenius
 On:  Monday, February 08 2010 @ 10:37 AM PST
 Views 43 Replies 2

DIY Hardware for Electronic Art


Interactive LED Panel kits


Meggy Jr RGB
LED matrix game
development kit.


Business-card sized
AVR target boards


Peggy 2
LED Pegboard kits