Hop farming

Did you know that Idaho is number two in hop production with the amount of wheat, malt, barley and hops produced in the state? Idaho could be known as the beer state. David Sparks, with hop producer Ed Adkins. Speaker2: Begin the season by going out and pruning the plant back. It's a perennial, so it re-emerges from the rootstock after pruning. Then you proceed to train the plants. They need that clean structure to grow up. So we use coconut husk. It's a nice fibrous plant. It gives the hop something to easily climb and adhere to as it weaves its way to the trellis. From there, we train the plant around the string in a clockwise manner, depending on varieties 2 to 5 vines per string. So as it emerged in generally from being pruned back in May, we would train them, we would train them again. Generally the first week of June, through this course, we're spraying them hops, primary disease or mildews downy mildew in this particular region that's followed then through the summer months by sprays for other insects. Aphid Bertha Armyworm That kind of carries us through the harvest time third week of August. We use mechanical pickers here called hop combines, so we harvest the majority of the plant in the field and then it's brought in for secondary cleaning and then it's dried from 75 to 80% moisture down to 9.5%. And eventually then it's put into £200 rectangular bales. Speaker1: Good work, Ed and cheers.