HIGH HOPES FOR HOPS - EXTREME GARDENING

Did I mention that I'm not really very fond of heights?

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Some days, you just don't have a choice. In fact, let's make that two days, since I messed up on the first one. In this post I will start to show you how I plan to grow my hops this year. Unfortunately it'll take all year to see if it works, but I'll show you the start of the set up and the recent work I've done.

DAY ONE - ENDING UP A LITTLE SHORT

The goal was to run a heavy duty chain between two trees, about fifteen feet or so in the air. In the photo above, my two older @little-peppers are checking the distance. The chain was twenty feet long and could support 415 pounds, so I figured that it should work.

Since hops bines can grow twenty feet or more in a season, and because they can use some serious support, I thought that this set up would be good. Here you can see me climbing the first tree with the chain. For a guy who weighs about 200 pounds, I can still get around pretty good.

The chain itself was not only heavy-duty but also heavy. I figured it would handle the job well and be built to last. There was one minor detail that I hadn't fully taken into account, but I'll get to that shortly.

To hook the chain to the trees I planned on just looping it and attaching it to itself. Here you can see me up in the tree attempting to get that part of the job without falling out of the tree.

Hops love sunlight too, so I wanted to trim off a lot of the extra branches. Here Pinkie-Pepper has taken a photo to show how she used the clip to loop the chain through the handle of my saw so that I could pull it up into the tree to cut some branches.

She did a great job and I was able to just pull the saw safely up for my to use.

When cutting branches off of a tree that you are in, the most important thing to remember is not to cute the branch that you are standing on. Thankfully I remembered. However, when I got up into the next tree, I realized that my chain was too short! Rather than taking a photo of that too and risking a fall, I quickly climbed down and call it quits for the day.

DAY TWO - MORE CHAINS & MORE TREES

After picking up some more chain and more clips to join them together, I revised my plan slightly to include another tree. Above you can see the three trees and the points of attachment. I've also drawn yellow lines connecting the dots to represent the chains, but the chains in real life will be somewhat slack to account for growth, wind, and swaying.

The plan is to run wire from the ground up to the chain and plant the hops plants near the base of the wire. Then, as the hops bines grow, they can run up the wire to the chain, and figure things our from there if they want more. By the end of this growing season this area may just be one big wall of hops.

Here you can see me back up that first tree removing more branches. I was planning on removing the lower limbs on the trees that I was going to keep in this area anyway, so if the chain idea doesn't work, I haven't really lost too much other than the fact these branches would be helpful to climb back up and remove the chain.

This is me climbing the middle tree, which was a little easier than the first one because there are two close together. Eventually I wedged myself between the two trunks and used opposing forces to climb up. Thankfully, the chain wasn't too heavy for me.

While this may not look easy, it is still not as easy as it looks. I've climbed around a lot in life, and for the most part know my limits to a point. Since I've never been beyond my limits though, I might run into trouble one day. Basically, I could be lighter and stronger, but since I'm not I deal with what I've got.

That is me in the final tree. Thankfully, the project went well and no one had to take pictures of me falling. I really don't like being up high but I hear that falling down low from up high can be even worse. I will try not to find out first hand.

Once the job was completed for the day, I quickly returned to the ground floor where I prefer to be! I'll keep you posted on how this idea works out. As usual, I'm optimistic!

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-knowing-which-branch-to-cut

Until next time…

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GIF provided by @orelmely

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