What are these, can you guess? I can’t decide whether it’s an obvious question or a good puzzler.
Hint: they’re growing on a vine on our back porch. They’re grown en masse in NW USA with cultured variety names like Centennial, Simcoe, Amarillo, Chinook…. English varieties have blunt names like Fuggles and Nugget. We’re growing oodles of them at Zealandia for a customer in Nelson, NZ.
Up close view–you got it?
Hops. For beer. Yum.
Actually, I just did a tea out of them to see what they really taste like minus all the malt, and they’re BITTER. That’s the point, I guess. They do smell nice at any rate!
And now, after spending 30 minutes harvesting one plant, I spent the next 30 minutes watching you-tube videos of hop harvest machinery. Mechanization, it’s a wonderful thing.
Give It A Burl 
I guessed it. Maybe because Peter owns a brewery. Harvesting is the issue. So many people have told Pete they are planning to grow hops and are looking for a market– until they find out how difficult it is to harvest them.
Did you plant them at your house? I understand they are fairly easy to grow. We were thinking of growing some in pots to climb over the pergola that John built for the patio at the brewery.
Any suggestions on how to get started? Look at Wolf Hollow Brewing Company and you will see some pics of the place. We think the beer is great too.
Hi Mrs. B! We planted just one plant, (Riwaka, so the seller claimed) at the house, and just used an old porch post and some fishing line for trellis. If we owned a place of our own it’d be really tempting to grow them as walls to an outdoor patio, and I bet they’d go great over a pergola. We have dry summers in Christchurch and don’t seem to get downy mildew or powdery mildew, like the hops in NY get. Or maybe Riwaka is disease resistant? The ones we have at work get both thrips and spider mites, and I imagine you’d get those too in NY….but maybe the vines are vigorous enough that it doesn’t matter for a home planting. They are certainly vigorous. Wish I could be at the WHBC for St Patrick’s day celebration!
Yeah they have had some fun shindigs there on holidays. One of the owners is Irish- Kenneally family.
Maybe next time you are in NY you can visit.