Pick my Brain

It is the time of year that people ask me questions.  I welcome them.  Please ask whatever and I will post hopefully with some lovely photos.

Here we have cascade hops erupting.  Methinks they need to be thinned.

Hop Harvest

Todd here is helping me uncover our mailbox. We made the mistake of harvesting some immature cones but there's plenty more.

Our hops were planted specifically for brewing beer. I am sorta amazed by how many people ask me "What do you use these for?" Goes to show that I have been keeping different company than I used to.

Decades ago I worked on an archeaological project with 2 crews, the limp dicks and the fat lushes. I was a fat lush. But yes, I suppose I might actually consume some simply as tea.

Thought I'd link to this, Harvesting Home Grown Hops, from Ben's Home Brew youtube account. Ben is actually local to Pittsburgh. Todd has gotten brewing and winemaking supplies from his Tarentum store.

Obscure Mailbox, Bumblebee Eater, Cypress Flowers, Rainbow Peppers

My mailbox is getting hard to find.

Sylvia likes to eat bumblebees. If you look closely at the leaf next to her arms, you'll notice a couple balls of pollen from a bee's hind legs. I guess she doesn't like pollen. I get mad at her but she can't help it. Mantises will eat anything that moves.

I stills get a kick out of these flowers and the lacy leaves.

Rainbow peppers are very pretty and VERY hot.

Catching Up Eye-candy

It really is hard to keep up. Here's some non sequential photos that caught my eye.

This was the salad bowl. The beets were in it early on and though they are stunted are still lovely. Enough has survived in it to keep it pretty even though they aren't exactly thriving.

This is a good view of the 2nd crop of cabbages filling out. I get a kick out of this everytime I look at it.

These hops are glorious. It will be worthwhile to harvest them this year. Last year they were far less productive.

This is my 3rd post today! I intend to do one more post. I took too many pretty pictures not to.

Hops

The hops are producing cones. There are 3 varieties cascade, centennial, and unknown. Here we have a cascade cone.

This cascade is in its 2nd year here and it shows. The 1st year I had it in a large container because I wasn't ready to plant it in the ground. This year I had reclaimed enough space and it was pretty clear to me that the plant had outgrown its container.

This unknown variety of hops has shown its gender. A friend who worked at the Mung Dynasty brought me a small pot of what I thought were going to be unknown established pants with rhizomes. Instead they were a small pot of many, many seedlings. Out of that, I repotted some of them into a 9 cell seedling pack. When they got bigger I repotted 6 into small pots. Even later I planted 4 of those into different planters, but kept the 2 still in small pots. Of all of these only this plant which was still in a small pot and stunted for it, has shown any sign of cones.

I'm not a hops expert but I do know that each plant is gender specific. The cone producing gender is female. In most hops farm they only grow female hops. Why these hops have both genders I don't really know, but they do and I intend to keep only the female hops. I might end up discarding the rest of the wild hops if they show signs of being male.

I have tentatively named this female hop either "Mung Duke" or "Duke Mung" because not only did they come from behind the mung dunasty but it also used to be the Duquesne Brewery, where they brewed Duquesne beer, also called "duke."

Who knows, perhaps I have a unique variety. I have tried searching for what these might be without success. Perhaps they will be productive enough to share with other people. I think I will need to keep them for a few years before I know.