I have slayed the hops dragon

For the past 3 years, I have tried to start hops from a rhizome and had zero success.  I had given up.

One day this week I was at Farm & Fleet to buy a little potting soil and happened to see that they had some very healthy looking hops plants, so I picked up 2 plants.  They are an ornamental Nugget variety.

If you've never seen hops grow, you might not know that they will climb 20 feet in the air if you give them a rope to grab onto, and that's how they are grown commercially.  They are a very pretty plant and then develop the pretty little green cones which are used in brewing.

Between the field and the brewery, the hops are dried and packed into bales, or made into an extract or pellet for brewers to use to add the characteristic bitterness to beer and ales.

When I was working at Coors, I could not go near the hops batching areas as I am extremely allergic to the dust from the hops.  It takes no time for my lungs and throat to react, and not in a good way.

But the live plants are not a problem.

When I lived in Arvada, I had a neighbor, Kathy, who did a lot of planting of herbs around her yard.  Our fence line was a bit overgrown with plants that wanted to spread into my yard.

One day, as I was mowing, a plant 'grabbed' me, and I knew right away it was a hops plant.

This poor plant had grown into a huge knot.

Soon after, I bought some 12 foot stakes and pounded in near the hops and each year after, we had a nice screen of hops between our yards.

Kathy didn't know I worked at a brewery when she planted the hops, she just liked they way they looked.  Funny, living next door to each other for years in the city, we knew so little about each other.

But back to my hops here in Rice Lake.

Last summer, when cousin Paul was emptying the barn on his place, that used to be my Grandpa Ansgar's place, he found this bed headboard, I found some fence posts that fit inside the posts and now it is in my rock garden ready to have plants vine on it.

Nugget variety of ornamental hops.

 But the hops will turn into a big knot on just the headboard, so today, I added some twine for them to climb.  The twine is attached to an old metal hook/fire poker that also came out of Grandpa's barn.

This will be fun to watch right by the front door.

Already the little Nugget plants are growing and looking for something to climb.

Finally, I will have hops!  I have slayed the dragon.

Now, where can I plant some barley.