Initially, the pilot project had to establish whether or not it
would even get off the ground. “We needed to determine if
this dog would hunt,” is the way Lewis describes it. “We sat
there day by day, looking at the flowers, wondering if they
would flower, cajoling them to do so. Like a lot of research, it’s
all a crap shoot.”
The initial harvest in mid-August bagged up 3.7 pounds of
aromatic hops and the expectation is that the Phase II yield
will be much higher. “The neat thing about these plants is that
they’re a multi-year plant, not a one-shot like an annual where
you get one crop and it’s done. Hops are like a fruit tree where
every year you get a bigger harvest. We’re working under the
assumption that production increases dramatically after the
first year and that drives the importance of keeping the program
going now that we have an established library of plants. We’ll
continue to seek industry support to continue it, but this train is
rolling and I have no intention of stopping now.”
Lewis’s predecessor at CEAC, Colin Clark at HydroHops, says,
“My first attempt to grow hydroponic hops was in the University
of Arizona CEAC club greenhouse, where we wanted to see if
we could get a handful of plants to survive. They did and I took
that experience with me to Colorado and scaled it up to over
2,000 plants in a 5,000-square-foot greenhouse.”
As co-owner and head grower, Clark set out to provide beer
brewers with a quality of hop higher than that of traditional
growing methods, a variety of strains providing wet hops
offered in an extended growing season.
“Hydro Hop Farms LLC is currently harvesting its fourth
season, proving that hops can be grown successfully in a
hydroponic greenhouse using artificial off-season lighting
to produce hops of superior quality and oil content. Going
into current season five, our main challenge is to make this a
more profitable venture.”
Labor and harvesting equipment are two of the major cost
factors to be considered and resolved. “It currently takes
someone about an hour to harvest just over a pound of dry hops
and while hard harvesting is okay for small niche growers,
scaling things up for greater production requires mechanical
harvesting as well as some tweaking over the way we space
and grow our plants,” Clark says.
“ PEOPLE
don’t realize how much work is
involved here. Hops are a physically demanding
plant and I’ve never worked this hard in my life.”
Like many start-up operations, many hands make work lighter
and Clark says hydroponic hop greenhouse growers need to
help each other. “We need to share research, share knowledge,
and share our passion. Our company motto is, ‘We’re not here
to make a dollar, we’re here to make a change.’ The future
holds good things for controlled environment growing; we just
need more educated workers, enthusiastic entrepreneurs to
keep the ball rolling and prove to the consumer and the inves-
tors that controlled environment agriculture can and should be
a respected part of the commercial agricultural industry.”
Adds CSU’s Bauerele, “Despite the setbacks we’ve encountered
in our research experiments, I’m not giving up on this because
it’s doable and the growing commercial interest from a number
of large North American growers supports that theory.”
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