[HesterF]

Are Hops a fruit? Anyhow, has anybody here grown them? Husband is currently planning a vinyard but I'd quite like to add a couple of rows of Hops on the end. Does anybody know what the yields are like? And how much does that convert to once brewed?

I've been googling but not getting much joy (partly because either my internet is on a go-slow or there are a lot of sites down at the moment). All pie-in-the-sky at the moment but fun to plan.....

H

[spandit]

My inlaws grew some to decorate a marquee for my wedding. You have to put the seeds in the fridge to get them to germinate but they grew very quickly. They just got binned afterwards so don't know how many you'd need for brewing

[Olly398]

They probably do fruit but the bit you want is the flower. I fancy growing some too and have found a few places to buy the bare root stock such as here www.willingham-nurseries.co.uk/
 
But they work out at around a tenner posted per plant which seems excessive for an experiment so I wondered if anybody wanted to donate or swap me some...    *goes to marketplace forum*   

[HesterF]

I've found a place near here that does them too - a bit more expensive http://www.essentiallyhops.co.uk/acatalog/Hop_Plants.html but I could collect which would help. I'd like to buy some from Kent since we're in the heart of the traditional hop growing region and a lot of the latest variants were developed at Wye College which is just a couple of miles away (so much you can learn in 24 hours of slow googling on and off!).

I've been planning on paper and the rows are 60m long so I'd be planting about 120 plants which could yield 1kg each. Doesn't sound like a lot until you look at recipes which call for an ounce or two per five gallons! Not sure I'm too into the brewing but there are enough microbreweries around that I hope I could find somebody to buy and I'd like to experiment with other hop products - pillows and decorations and stuff (anything that keep my kids asleep for longer will be popular here).

Biggest worry now is that our site is quite windy - it's got everything else going for it but I'm not sure how you protect stuff that's several metres up, a traditional hedge would be nowhere near high enough.

Oh, and happy to donate once I've got them going (not sure how to propagate them - need another 24 hours on that). But that'll be at least two years off and probably longer since we can't really afford any of this!

H