Field Report – June 2021

Reporting from a Citra® yard, the Citra® plant is about ripe for where we would expect it to be right now. This yard was trained about a month ago so all of the growth is the result of 4 weeks of plant growth. If you go back six or seven weeks, this yard was burned back where there was zero vegetative matter above the ground so the hops grow very quickly. On a good sunny day with plenty of nutrients and water, they will grow six or eight inches a day. Some of the old timers will tell you, they can actually hear the hops grow. We want these hops to be all the way to the top of the trellis which is about 18 feet of growth by the time they go into full bloom. Which is typically from the 5th to 15th of July.

It is an interesting side note, that here in the Pacific Northwest the reason it is such an ideal place to grow hops is we have 15-16 hours of daylight this time of year. We need to have those long days to signal to the plant that it is time to bloom. That’s why hops, you can grow hops in the Southern, warmer regions, but they don’t have that long day length to signal flowering. You might get a few cones but it is not enough to be commercially viable.

We had a little bit of a windstorm on June 13th. Some bines need to be re-wrapped onto the twine to get them up. But there is no sign of bloom in this hop yard yet which is really good because bloom signals “shut down, and start producing”. It is important to create a nice structure all the way up to the top of the trellis to support a good crop. That’s going to give the grower the best chance for a good yield. This yard is about on schedule. It’s the 14th of June today, so there is still another 4 weeks of good growth before bloom happens. Visible growth happened in 4 weeks, and with 4 more weeks to go it should make it to the top of the trellis and we should have a nice crop of Citra this year for brewing customers ready to create new, exciting flavors for their beer.