Our First Year Hops Experiment

We finally got to harvest our meager hops crop this morning.   The first year plants never produce much, but we did get about a quart of hops cones!  We will need to winterize the plants by laying them down and covering them with hay bales before the heavy frosts come.  The hops plants should produce more flowers next year and every year thereafter.  This year, there is at least have enough to try one of those "hops pillows" for helping with sleep problems.  Supposedly a person puts dry hops cones into a small pillow (about 4 in x 8 in) and at night you crush them inside the pillow to release the aroma, and put the small pillow on a table next to the bed, and the aroma will help to induce sleep for those of us who suffer from insomnia.   I must say that the hops cones DO have a distinctive strong aroma and long lasting, too, as just picking them this morning my hands are full of the scent.   Even after hand washing!   Check out my blog post from June 1st of this year for a reference about how and when we planted the hops.   Only a few of the 10 plants actually produced any good cones.   Perhaps the deer ate them?  The deer ate our winter squash plants next to the hops before we put up an electric fence to keep them out!  Well, there is always next year!

A vine full of hops cones ready for harvest.

A close up of the hops cones.

A quart of hops.  At least we ended up with something!