I know that homebrewing is a popular craft 'down under', so I figure
that some of you might be growing your own hops, too. I just planted my
first hop rhizomes this year, encountered a few problems and questions,
and after spending a LOT of time trying to find answers and a community
of hop gardeners, I decided that what we need is one centralized
respository of knowledge about growing and caring for hops. I therefore
created http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grow-Hops -- which is exclusively
about hop gardening. I hope that those of you who are growing your own
hops will join us. There is definite interest out there because is less
than 24 hours from starting the group, we already have 29 members.

By the way, for many years I have also had an enormous vegetable garden
-- about 7,000 square feet -- and my son sells vegetables to the produce
stand down the street. Got hit by a late frost here in Arkansas this
spring, so I had to replant most of my garden, but things are looking
very good right now. I tilled two dump truck loads of sawdust into the
garden in the fall, and applied a lot of nitrogen to help it decompose,
and it has helped a lot. The worst mistake I ever made was putting a
dumptruck of manure in my garden a couple of years ago; I'm still
dealing with every weed known to mankind. :-(

Thank you.

Bill Velek
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BrewingEquipment Discuss 'equipment only'
with 590+ brewers, including many pros and many with Tiers/RIMS/HERMS.