[Jimmyhand]

Hey all,

This is my first post on here,

Right now my question is how hard are hops to grow for beer?

im a keen home brewer (tho admittedly more wine i have no room for a beloved micro brewery) but i love my garden and would like to try something new.

also on a side note im having a go at growing white button mushrooms this year im hoping to grow them outside if anyone's got any advice i would appreciate it.

cheers

[pgkevet]

My brother in law has a succesful hop vne growing up a trellis..and since his gardening skills equate to a  lobotomised squirrel doing trigonometry I figure they can't be hard to grow.

Mushrooms outdoors is a different matter - probably more luck than skill and a battle to beat assorted parasites to them when they do come up..

[Lesley Silvester]

I don't know about hops as I've never tried but I've had several goes at mushrooms without success.

[HesterF]

I think with hops it depends how many you want to grow and where. I looked into it - we're in Kent - and they don't like wind and they do go high so they need 3m plus trellis with little exposure to wind which is not something we can manage yet. You can get dwarfing hops which just go to 6ft so if you've got a relatively sheltered situation, I'd try that. They can grown up through hedges or trellises.

We were self sufficient on mushrooms last year! But mostly because my children hate them so the few we grew were enough. My husband got a set of three 'ready to grow' logs which we had inside and had various success. Outside would be much harder because you'll get all sorts of spores in there that are not what you want. You have to sterilise the logs first and just introduce the spores you want. It is quite complex. My dad has been trying for years with not much success. Fun to try though.