Rainy days where I am stuck inside only give my mind more time to wander. Actually this time of year, scorching hot days really accomplish the same thing. Either way if you take my wandering mind and combine it with my brewing books or, in this case, a book that The Wife brought home from the library and the wheels really start spinning. If I carry through with what I am thinking about at any level she may never bring me a book again.
What I am referring to this time is that I am in the early stages of pondering the possibilities of growing my own hops. Hey, if I ever make myself a randalizer, I would love to fill it with hops from my back yard.
Peppers are great, but . . .
Before moving along too far with this thought I would like to make it known that I realized it is at least a moderately crazy idea if only because Florida is not exactly the greatest situation for hop growing. With that said, it is not impossible.
From my (admittedly limited) understanding, hops generally grow best between roughly 35 to 55 degrees of latitude. My location (at about 28 degrees latitude) does not meet that basic requirement. Though I don’t know that it is true, I have read that hops have been grown in Hawaii, so I should have a shot. For this argument I will still say that my geographic location is strike one. With that as the first I can list some of the other hurdles I might have:
- Soil – my sandy soil is not exactly the desired nutrient-rich mix. That would likely affect the yield at minimum. Maybe if I mix enough of my spent grains into the compost I can better that situation?
- Height – The plants can grow up to 30 feet (or so). I assume The Wife and all of my neighbors could do without that sight. They may not grow that high, but they would certainly end up taller than our fence. Then again, I could train them to grow horizontally along the fence.
- Pests – Judging by the various bugs that we had in trying to grow a pesticide free vegetable garden this might be the toughest issue to overcome. Florida may also bring some different plant diseases that the hop vines would have to deal with.
- Me – Have I mentioned that I don’t exactly have the best record of keeping plants alive? My thumb is not even close to a shade of green.
- Whatever else I am not aware of at the moment.
So instead of giving up maybe I should just expect to fail many, many times before getting some variety to grow for me? Of course I could also turn my garage into a growing room of sorts (reference the close cousin of hops) and take all of these variables out of play. I think it would be far less expensive and intrusive to my home to just fail a bunch of times though.
Why use these when I could have fresh?
Or maybe should forget hops and just turn my entire lawn into a barley field? I don’t like mowing that much anyway!
This is another of those posts where I am thinking as I write, so I have much more research to do before becoming legitimately serious about taking a shot at this. The concept of having (essentially) a proprietary variety of hops that only I will brew with sounds pretty cool to me (similar to my pint glass).
Then if I could get Seattle Jeff and Syracuse Rob to grow some as well exclusively for my brewing we would have infinite brewing options via geographically remote and unique hops.
That’s enough of my hop growing train of thought for today . . . to be revisited at a later time.
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