Vegetable gardener hops to growing hops
Vegetable gardener Michael Lackey has taken his love for plants one step further — growing hops for beer.
Also a craft beer fan, Lackey started researching how to make beer and stumbled upon information mostly about West Coastgrown hops.
“I first got interested in February after reading a Virginia Craft Beer magazine at a local bar,” says Lackey, 34, of Hampton, Va.
“I was reading about all these great new craft breweries popping up all around the area. I thought how cool would it be to open your own brewery? But, it seemed like a lot of work and money, what a dream! Then it clicked. I do a vegetable garden every year and I love doing it, so why not grow hops.”
When his day ends as an audio-visual technician, he heads home to farmland that’s been in his family since the 1950s.
“It’s an acre of land but only a quarter of it is not wooded now,” says Lackey.
“The space I’m using is 40-by-40 square feet of field. The soil tested out at 6.5 to 7.0 pH levels, which are ideal for growing hops. The soil is a dark sandy gray with good organic matter — it just looks good.”
In April, Lackey ordered 64 rhizomes from Thyme Garden in Oregon — www. thymegarden.com. A rhizome is a horizontal underground root system that sends out lateral shoots that pop out above ground where it’s planted.
Hops are perennials, so they grow back every year, which is great, according to Lackey, who continues to study the plants, which can be invasive in a home garden.
“They first start with a little green shoot that pops up from the ground,” he says.
“This happens within 14 days of planting. After that, each plant grows fast, and wants to climb up a string towards the sun in 24 days. In about 50 days, each plant reaches 20 feet in the air and starts producing cones. Five months later you are ready to pick hops.”
Lackey has found that hops are a sensitive plant that needs a lot of care and attention. Water and sun get them growing and keep them healthy. Daily inspections for pests and diseases are a must, too, he says.
“Your growing season can go downhill fast if you don’t see problems coming,” he says.
“I always look at the leaves to see signs of activity. From what I have learned, downy mildew disease is one of the most talked about problems with hops. Downy mildew is a fungus-like organism that thrives in wet humid places. This disease will attack the plant, spread to its roots and travel to other plants. The only way to stop the disease is to isolate the plant and dig it up.”
So far, the plants are thriving, he happily adds, thanks to his workforce of good friends and helpful family.
“I harvested a little early this year, July 23, because the hops seemed ready to pick,” he says.
“The right feel and the right smell all fell in line with what I have read. There is a small window for picking hops. You want to get max freshness for taste.
“I think the humid weather and rain cycle produced the hops quicker. When you make it to the end of the harvest season, it’s a great feeling of accomplishment. Virginia is a great state for agriculture with some of the best soil in the country, and that inspired me to grow these beautiful plants.”
To plant and train the hop vines to grow up 20-foot-tall poles supported by guide wires on outer edges, Lackey used drills, saws, a tiller, shovels - and hours of hard labor. There are eight poles in a square pattern. The main pole is a wood 4-by-4 main center support to hold a pulley system that lowers hops to the ground for harvesting.
His research includes books like “The Hops Grower’s Handbook” and the “Field Guide for Integrated Pest Management in Hops.” He also attended the 2016 South Atlantic Hops Conference in Richmond, which he says was a good resource.
“Growing hops puts you to work but it’s worth it,” he says.
So far, nothing discourages Lackey from increasing his crop to 200 more rhizomes next year. This year’s harvest brought offers of $20 per pound for freshground hops.
“My dream is one day to make this a full-time job, and produce some of the finest East Coast hops coming out of Virginia,” he says.
Doctors are urging parents to ditch the spoon in favor of an oral syringe to measure medicine for young children, arguing that using spoons often leads to giving too little - or worse yet - too much of a good thing.
They say the best tool for accuracy is an oral syringe or dropper. Even dosing cups that come with many overthe-counter medications can pose a problem because the instructions often call for a teaspoon but the dosing cup is marked in milliliters, causing confusion.
The concern about dosing mistakes was recently highlighted in a New York University-led study that found that a whopping 84 percent of caregivers made one or more dosing errors when giving medicine to younger children.
Overdosing was the most common problem, with 68 percent of the 2,100 parents in the study making that mistake. Participants, mostly mothers, were responsible for caring for children 8 or younger.
“Overall, we found high dosing error rates,” the study authors wrote in the journal Pediatrics. Parents who used dosing cups greatly increased the odds of making a mistake. This was particularly true when pouring out smaller amounts of medicine. (Unlike adult remedies, children’s medicine most often comes in liquid form.)
“Our findings suggest that health care providers should encourage oral syringe use for the measurement of liquid medications, particularly when small doses are recommended,” the authors concluded. “This change would probably benefit all families.”
Possible side effects of improper doses of medicine include nausea, irritability and increased blood pressure.
Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommend parents use syringes, droppers or dosing cups over spoons when giving medicine to children. That’s because standard silverware varies widely in size.
Or in other words, not all teaspoons and tablespoons were created equally.