Grow your own hops

So you’ve got all the homebrewing kit – what next? Why not grow your own hops to create your own unique brews! And give yourself the rare opportunity to make a wet hopped (aka green hopped) beer with your freshly picked hops. At Dark Farm we’ve been growing hops for years. Alongside our traditional hop yard we’ve also been developing growing hops indoors. So whether you have a garden or not there is no reason you can’t grow some juicy fresh hops. 

You can buy our organically grown hops as a rooted plant to plant in your garden. You also choose to add on some brilliant organic feed – the same that we use here on the farm. Giving your hop plant all the nutrition they need to grow into beast.  We can also provide you with our tried and test our automated watering system – ideal for growing hops indoors on in garden rooms. 

They also make the perfect gift for homebrewers and beer lovers!

HOW TO GROW HOps

Dark Farm Hops

How to grow hops

Hops are generally hardy plants once you have them developed and you’ve kept feeding them – you should see great results each year. Note though, that hop rhizomes do take around 3 years to become mature so don’t expect too much for your first year’s harvest. Harvesting usually happens around September time. Each hop will be sent out with a guide and advice on how to grow and harvest them.

Dark Farm Hops

Feeding your hops

Hops are greedy buggers. They love full sun (but can tolerate partial shade), water and food. This is why we offer all our plants with an organic feed and feeding program. We use the exact same feed and program on our farm. The feeds help root development, plant growth and flowering. They also offer help to protect your hops against disease. 

Dark Farm Hops

indoor growing & water automation

If you follow Dark Farm Hops, then you’ll know that the majority of our hops are grown hydroponically in automated watering systems. This allow you to have full control over what your plant is fed and when. Our indoor auto watering system is for indoor growing only. But are ideal for any light rooms, conservatories, garden rooms or green houses. While they can grow up to about 8m tall, they can be trailed.

HOP VARIETIES

All the hop plants we sell are grown on our farm. Each year we select the strongest plants and divide the rhizomes. After carefully selecting the cuttings we then replant the rhizomes in pots giving them a good feed to help their development. Once we are confident that the new rhizomes are happy and have started shooting we then send them off to you. This will be between April – May.