Beer n’ Books: Gardening for the Homebrewer

Title: Gardening for the Homebrewer
Author(s): Wendy Tweten and Debbie Teashon
ISBN: 978-0760345634
Pages: 208
Release date: September 15, 2015
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Genre: Nonfiction/How to
Format: Softcover
Source: Review copy

As I watch my attempt to grow barley wither into brown shrivels of failure, I prepare for next Spring. Winter means reading, research, and learning from my mistakes. I took a ton of notes and wrote quite a lot about my experience growing my own beer ingredients this year, but as much as I’ve learned, I’m still seeking something more comprehensive.

There’s not a lot out there for the intrepid homebrewing soilophile.

There’s a 1998 book, The Homebrewer’s Garden, by Dennis Fisher, which includes solid information, but spreads itself thin, trying to cover too many grains, herbs, and other sundry ingredients. It’s also 17 years old; a lot has changed in beer and brewing (hop and barley varieties, just as a start, never mind technology), making this guide feel a bit sepia tone when read by a member of the internet generation.

Then come the Brewing Elements series from Brewer’s Publications. These four are a must read for any brewer (home or otherwise) who has even the tiniest inkling of interest in the science behind the beverage. But for the wealth of knowledge contained therein, these books are still fundamentally informational; For the Love of Hops contains a brief section on growing your own hops, but is moreso dedicated to the history and scientific workings of the cultivar. The same goes for the other three; excellent books, but lacking practical lessons.

Anyone looking to (successfully) grow any beer ingredient at home likely has to turn to the internet (or, for you AHA members, old copies of Zymurgy Magazine). That’s not the worse thing ever, but correlating loose content from various websites can be as tedious as weeding an overgrown carrot patch.

Fellow blogger Ed from The Dogs of Beer was kind enough to CC me on an offer for a review copy of Gardening for the Homebrewer. I happily wrapped my dirty little hands around the book, hoping for a spiritual update to Fisher’s work.

Physically, the book is gorgeous: full-color macro photographs that look good enough to scratch and sniff, color-coded text boxes with faux-decoupage flair, near-perfect formatting that organizes the content brilliantly. It’s really a pleasure to read, and the visuals don’t detract from the writing itself. While written by two people, it reads in one coherent voice, offering direct explanation and guidance with little pomp or fluff.

It’s broken into distinct sections over seven chapters, starting with a basic primer on gardening that’s simple enough for a total rookie, but also contains just enough for the journeyman. Chapter 2 covers beer, but only spans 25 pages. The malting process is described across two pages, with no images or sundry information to guide the reader. If you are looking for a book on the basics of beer before it’s even near the kettle, this has some good information. If you were looking for a more comprehensive guide to barley, malting, or troubleshooting the latter, keep on searching.

More than half of the book is dedicated to “other” which in this case means grapes, berries, herbs, apples, pears, and more. Much like Fisher’s book, Gardening for the Homebrewer reads an inch deep and a mile long. Trying to cover all these plants and ingredients is an admirable goal, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and readers like me wanting more.

From their bios on the last page and a quick Google, it’s clear that both Tweten and Teashon are very accomplished gardeners. What is unclear is if they are homebrewers (or have ever homebrewed). While all of the information presented is factually correct, there’s a sort of disconnect in the exposition, as if they are more focused on the plants than their role as an ingredient in the brewing process. That could be my beerish romanticism pontificating and not an actual flaw, but it’s worth noting there’s next to no brewing-related content in this book. Suggestions for what beverage the plant might go best in, but not a lot about when or how to include it in a typical brewing/fermentation process.

Regardless of their identity as brewers, the co-authors do a fantastic job of outlining some of the most practical (and sometimes hard to find, even with a black belt in Google-fu) details of growing. Simple but integral details like appropriate USDA growing zone, spacing, and pruning are included for every plant. Most even have a picture of the mature plant, a surprisingly helpful addition for someone who starts with a handful of seeds and isn’t entire sure what elderberry is actually supposed to look like.

Despite not having what I was looking for, I enjoyed this book, and will continue to use it as a reference. The overview of growing conditions are worth the price alone (there are 52 total, ranging from mint to plums), and the rather thorough section of cider apples taught me a lot I though I already knew (but apparently didn’t).

More a book for gardeners who like brewing-related plants than brewers turned gardners, but well written, edited, and presented nonetheless.

Growing a Career

Seven years ago, I held a bunch of seeds in my hand. A herbaceous menagerie piled lazily in my palm.

Some I’d had since birth, stored away by my parents in little bags and boxes until the soil was fertile enough to plant them. Others I deliberately picked out myself after years of scrutinizing plants and perennials, flowers and fruits. Others yet appeared as if by natural magic, wild and weird and full of unknown potential. My future rested there, dormant and dry, needing naught but my time and energy.

On one side of the garden, I prepared the soil. Spent years learning the inborn dos and donts, uncovering how best to make the seed yield a plant that would yield a crop. I thought I knew which seeds went where, which I wanted and suited me best, which would grow the fastest, the strongest, the tallest. Armed with oddly specific education, I dropped these seeds into the tilled dirt with utmost care, careful to spread them out evenly, set them deeply, water them diligently.

On the other side, I haphazardly scattered those random mystery pods that had mixed in with the rest, unsure how to make them grow, of if I even wanted them to grow at all.

The sun shone and rains fell. The earth turned in the sky and on the ground, the work of worms and wormholes. The seeds took root, extending their little legs into the ground around them, building a base before shooting tender probes out from the safety of below, to peek out at the above. As expected, the seeds I had planted with dedication grew first, in clean, traditional rows that at first, looked healthy and bright.

But then something wholly unexpected happened. The random seeds, despite a lack of research or education or attention, began to sprout too. They popped up here and there, some spindly some leafy some altogether bizarre, but all of them healthy and in some ways, miraculous.

For a few years, I focused on tending the chosen set of seeds; spent most of my sunlight hours weeding, feeding. They grew steadily, and after a short amount of time, required significantly less care than I had originally expected. This left time open in the fading twilight of most days. I turned my attention to my random sproutlings.

By now, they were bushy and broad, almost antithetical to my organized rows on the other side of the garden. I took some time to learn what they were now that their true identities had burst forth from the seeds, and found that what I’d accidentally planted was actually really cool. The plants proved much more exotic and engaging, and unlike my slow but steady growth on the other side, some grew rapidly with next to no direct input from the gardener.

I began to split myself in two; tending my faithful crop as always, but finding myself spending more and more time cultivating the growth of the randoms on the other side. Some days I’d neglect my planned garden entirely, lost in a verdant bower of intertwined barley and hops. All the plants thrived, but my original plan, to grow and cash in on a traditional crop, suddenly seemed lacking, when the possibility of a much more exciting but much less consistent path opened up to me like a tulip on a sunny spring day.

It’s almost time to harvest, at least for the first time. Despite the balancing act, both sets of plants have budded and nearly come to flower; their nascent peak, my mental pique.

I’m at a horticultural precipice. I have a decision to make. I know that once they flower, it will be impossible to keep both alive. If I choose one side of the garden to devote my attention to, the other will wither and die. I’ll lose the invested time and resources, the connections and friendships I’ve made with other gardeners and farmers, the proprietary industry knowledge that might carry me into the future. But if I don’t make a choice, neither crop will flourish, and I’ll be left a failed gardener, with little to show for my half-decade-plus of work.

It’s not an easy decision to make. Safety or adventure? Boredom or risk? My thirty years around the sun haven’t helped clear up much, and I stand, staring at my plants, wondering what the hell to do.

Seven years ago, I held a bunch of seeds in my hand. A future, maybe, but not the one I planned.

How can one make a decision now that might affect his always? What does one do when waiting for a flower to bloom?

How to Transplant Hops

I took the unseasonably warm weather this Saturday as a sign that I needed to get outside and do something. I need that vitamin D.

I toyed with making an impromptu brew day out of the faux-spring revival, but a lack of prior planning and fresh ingredients kept my kettle dry. I thought about washing the cars, but figured I wouldn’t tempt the weather gods with some pristine paintwork to defile. I even considered going for an extended run, but the overindulgence of the holidays still rolled in my belly like an errant skateboard on a halfpipe.

So, instead, I decided to transplant two of my hop plants.

When I’d first planted them, I broke ground in a dizzy revelry, overwhelmed with the idea that I would soon be growing my own delicious nuggets of lupulin. I’d painstakingly prepared an area for the gangly rhizomes; tilled, pH tested, de-rocked and de-rooted. I built for them a nest where they could sprout and grow and be happy. The one sort of definitely major thing I didn’t consider as I buried them a few inches down, was how much light they’d be getting in the rather secluded plot tucked next to my deck beneath two oaks.

Turns out it wasn’t nearly enough. While the bines did grow in the flat, sun-starved dapple, they didn’t exactly flourish. The fatal parallel was finally drawn when some first year hops I planted in a much sunnier spot grew to twice the size and produced dozens more cones. I knew they had to be moved. The problem was, I didn’t know how to move them.

I don’t have a lot of luck moving plants. Two bushes I tried to move last year did very impressive impressions of dead versions of themselves by the end of the summer. I’m also psychologically averse to pulling an established plant out of the ground. It feels like I’m ripping an organ from the earth with crude tools, in some barbaric verdant ritual.

But it had to happen. For the good of the hops! Lack of knowledge be damned. Armed only with a shovel, my hands, and some guidance via Stan Hieronymus, I set to giving my harrowed hops a happy new home.

How to Transplant Hops

Things you’ll need:

• Hops to be transplanted (sort of a no brainer)
• A shovel (given the size of the root networks, you’ll need something big)
• Your hands (they’re gonna get dirty, so plan ahead)
• A new place for the hops (see the first item of the list)
• Some extra topsoil (I had some left over from summer planting)
• A beer (I chose Troegs HopBack Amber because hop back. Get it!? I need help.)

Step 1: Find the Nubs

If, like me, you decided to transplant your hops in the late-fall/winter, you’re going to have to find exactly where you cut the bine down from the previous year. If, also like me, you were dumb enough to winterize your garden by dumping shredded leaves all over the soil before you moved the hops, you’re going to have to do what I like to call, “exploratory dirt surgery.”

Just dig around with your hands for a while until you find the nub where you cut down the bine. Don’t bust out the shovel quite yet; you don’t want to cut through any major roots. And yes, “nub” is the technical term. You can trust me, I’m a scientist.

A hop “nub.” It has been so temperate here in Maryland that the hops are sprouting like it’s April or something.

Once you’ve found the nub(s), you can start to excavate the area around said nub to see where the major roots are. After a little bit more hand-digging, you should reveal what looks like a miniature stump with hundreds of differently sized roots shooting off in every direction.

A hop “stump.” Looks kind of Lovecraftian style terrifying, actually.

Step 2: Dig around the Stump

Now comes the somewhat tricky part: you need to dig around the stump far enough to not accidentally sever any major hop-arteries, but close enough to actually be able to pull the tentacled beast from the ground. It’s a fine art. I started pretty far away and worked in closer until the whole ground heaved when I levered the shovel upwards.

Protip: The roots spread out very wide, but don’t go very deep. Sort of like bamboo, but way less intrusive and annoying.

At one point, I cut a pretty major root off of the rhizome and felt really super bad about everything. Before I was too overtaken with grief however, I remember that when I planted these things, they were barely the size of pencils. Hops are resilient little dudes. Don’t intentionally hack off a bunch of roots, but if you do hit some while you’re digging, it’s OK. Chances are the plant will be fine. Probably. Hopefully.

Step 3: Pull it out of the Ground

I’m not being metaphorical or anything, literally grab a hold of it and pull it out of the ground.

A second year hop plant’s root system, no longer in the ground. Believe it or not, this is all connected and about 60% of it is not in frame.

Step 4: Drink beer and Admire your Green-ish Thumb

And your high school guidance counselor said you’d never amount to anything. Just look at what you grew! You nurtured and loved a living thing! And then summarily ripped it from its comfortable home for selfish reasons. Maybe that counselor had a point.

Anyway, drink some beer and maybe pour some out for your hop-homies.

Step 5: Dig up the new spot

Given that your plant is much, much bigger now, you’ll need to dig deeper and wider than you would for new baby rhizomes (I dug down about 5 inches and out about 10, but this will vary depending on the size of your plant). You’ll also want to position the stump so that the nub is facing up, and planted roughly where you want the bines to grow. Both of my plants seemed to sprout bines from the same part of the plant each year, so there’s a good chance where you place the stump will be where your new growth will pop its little head out, come spring.

Once you’ve placed it where you want it, dump the dirt back on top. Remember that the nub was technically above ground before, so try not to bury it completely in the new spot, either. For good measure, I added a new layer of topsoil and patted it down to create a uniform bed for the hops to sleep in through winter. I then tossed some mulched leaves on top to keep the soil from getting too hard (you obviously wouldn’t want/need to do this if you’re transplanting in the spring).

A patch of ground,
And not a sound,
But worms and roots turning.

Step 6: You’re done!

Pray to Gaia that your plants like their new home, and that you’ll be seeing little reddish-green spears shooting up come the long-thaw. Drink the rest of your beer. Rejoice. Then go clean all that mud off your shoes before you track it into the house and your significant other yells at you.