Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Growing Hops and Racoons Be Gone









Hops traditionally grows tall on supported vines. Or you can grow them like I did, horizontally along wires. Then you dont have to climb up 12 foot ladders to pick the flowers.

Wires. Hmmm. I pounded in two iron snow fence poles at each side of the garden at the back and rigged a 100 foot clothsline back and down and forth three times, drew it tight again and tied it off. A perfect trellis kind of rig.

Back up 5 years. Originally this was so I could grow grapes. Four years later we have beautiful big, juicey, black grapes, climbing up and along the smooth strong clothsline. Tons of grapes, jackpot.

Just a night or two before they matured for picking and eating, the raccoons got them. Every single last grape. All gone. Then the little @#$%$^&* Sh** all over the deck and the roof. Big piles of black grape sh** everywhere, a huge racoon picnic. How demeaning is that?

Not funny, all done with grapes, lol.

Anyway we all know they use hops for beer so I got a plant and took some pics of the three year old vines. By the way, I'm drinking hops tea from the flowers saved from last year. Sedating, induces sleep.

You can see the green hops flowers in the pic, where a vine has come around the corner and claimed the downspout. The main hops vines are in the background.


But the flowers have no seeds and you cant transplant the whole vine.

So how do hops they reproduce? Hops is a Rhizome. Rhizome roots shoot out little sprouts that often mosey along undergound sprout out and spread. All you do to reproduce is snip one of these root shoots off and replant it. Or put 3 of them in 3 pots and give them away as in the other picture.

Rhizomes are an interesting species.

johann

2 comments:

Miss Muse said...

You are surely a god to the raccoons!! You spent 4 years preparing for the party of the century! Now and for generations to come, they will speak of your garden party, be forever grateful, and vigilent to accept whatever offerings you may currently have for them.

johann said...

If this wasn't about me Miss Muse and all this racoon stuff happened to someone else I would agree with your position.

I have often said these little bandits are just trying to make a decent living like the rest of us. They mean no malice. They are cute, loveable, adorable, forever grateful. Yes.

But there is more to this story. Let's back up 10 years when we had this awesome cherry tree with tons of big, sweet, deep red cherries. I love cherries, you love cherries and suprize suprize, racoons love cherries too.

One of the cherry tree garden party games they liked to play overnight back then was to rip all the cherry bearing branches right off the tree. Easier to gather and eat. The tree eventually died.

And next day the gift they left to me was the same as the one they left at ther grape picnic. Piles of deep red cherry seed poop up on the roof, everywhere. Why oh why do they decorate rooves (roofs) this way?

By now you might see a trend here. A lesson. A eureka moment. Stop growing stuff that racoons like. Duh? Instead, grow Hops, garlic, herbs, tomatoes, marigolds. Racoons detest garlic and marigolds in particular.

But hey, it's up to them to accept or decline my current offerings.

You wrote a very beautiful note.

For me, as I mentiond,

"RACOONS BE GONE", lol

johann