Hops are a notoriously sensitive crop that only grows in the Western Cape. That is until Khaya Maloney came along. Established through an urban agriculture incubator in 2018, Maloney supplies craft brewers with the hops he grows on his hydroponic rooftop farm, Afrileap. He shares some tips with us on how to grow hops hydroponically.
Based on a rooftop in Johannesburg, Afrileap is the first hop farm of its kind in the country. Maloney’s idea to start the farm was sparked by a TV programme about Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in New York that is housed on top of dilapidated buildings.
“I thought that’s a brilliant idea. The only difference is they actually took soil, using cranes, and they put it on top of the roof, and they grew on with soil, and that’s when I started. I thought ‘how can I innovate that?’.”
Maloney started looking around for more information and could not find anyone who was growing hops in an urban space.
“[I was] searching and going back and forth to different craft brewers and asking them if they had heard of hops being grown hydroponically. All of them said ‘no, they never heard of it’, and none of them had even tried it.”
To Maloney, the opportunity was too good to pass by. He set out to establish the first four seasonal hop house in Johannesburg, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Currently, in his second year as a hydroponics farmer, Maloney lists the following five elements as essential to hop hydroponics:
Make sure the plants get enough light
When Maloney first started his hydroponic farm, he was part of an incubator. He realised that he needed more equipment than that of the standard hydroponics farms his classmates were setting up. He explains that the standard hydroponics operation includes coverage from outside conditions like rain and temperature, a hydroponics filtration system and tanks, and an irrigation system. For his operation, he needed more.
“Hops are very picky and finicky crops. They need much longer, much more sunlight to grow, and there are stark differences between the temperatures in the Southern Cape and Gauteng. Gauteng only has about 11 to 14 hours of sunlight per day. In the Southern Cape, they have about 16, so I needed to supplement that using artificial lighting. LED lighting was more expensive, so that added to the costs of my farm.”
Manage your temperature
He also says that, because Gauteng is hotter than the Southern Cape, he needed to install infrastructure that controls and monitors the temperature on his farm. He also makes sure to keep his crops shaded.
“Joburg has scorching summers, very dry air, and more heatwaves than they do in the Southern Cape. Being in an enclosed space would burn the crop, so I had to compensate and get CO2 extractors, fans, and pulsators to bring the temperature down. The sensors that I put in the farm [monitor] the temperature. I have to regulate and maintain a consistent temperature that mimics the temperatures down in the Southern Cape during harvest season and through their growth cycle.”
Hydroponics provides a higher yield
Traditional hop farms in Mzansi are almost exclusively owned by South African Breweries. They tend to be bigger, commercial farms that harvest once a year. Maloney points out that, since his space is much smaller, he needed to have a higher yield to justify the expense of the farm.
“Hops have a 12-month growth cycle and they harvest once a year. On a 300-square-meter space, that wouldn’t be profitable. So that’s why I did it hydroponically. Hydroponically, you actually dial the nutrients into the roots of the hops once you put it in a Dutch Bucket System and put plant media and grow media in it. Then the roots come out through the sides and then you feed the nutrients directly into the seed, so that helps it grow quicker.”
Maloney says Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, or NPK, are the key ingredients he uses to feed his crop. “You are able to harvest much quicker because you’re manipulating the environmental conditions in order to trick the plant into thinking it’s in the same habitat. It’s being fed the same nutrients. It’s getting enough of the nutrients that it needs.”
Get the right infrastructure
Because hop farming requires such precise conditions, Maloney needed to buy quite a few additional items above the standard hydroponics system.
“I had to buy an extractor, air conditioning, pulsators, lighting, sensors, things that were very different from all my other classmates. Also, hops are climbers. They need a trellis, and I also have a sensor or timer system on my farm that switches on immediately after the sunset when it gets dark to supplement the lighting requirements that Joburg doesn’t have.”
One item Maloney found particularly useful is black-out curtains. He explains that this helps with ‘photoperiodism’.
“That’s a method that I learned about on the internet, where you basically trick the plant into believing their days are shorter so that they grow quicker. Photoperiodism is very important for hops and you have to get it absolutely right. When it’s flowering season, I sometimes close the curtains during the day and it turns the greenhouse absolutely black. The plants recognise that [as the days getting shorter] and, when it’s flowering time, and they feel actual sunlight and they grow much quicker.”
Make sure you get the right cultivars
The hop market is difficult to access, says Maloney, and your entry to it depends on whether you have the right cultivars. He explains that there are many hop cultivars, and you need to find ones that work.
“Currently I’m growing about four varieties. I’m growing Cascade, which is ane American blend; NAK, which is the variety of a gentleman that grew it naturally and who has a licensing and patenting around it; Kracanup is an Australian variety; and then Triple Pearl. They’re all different flavours, all different tastes, and very finicky. And you have to choose which one works best for the business rather than the one that you like when you taste it.”
An additional duty you have, is also to educate the brewers you sell your hops to, as hydroponically farmed hops need to be processed a bit differently.
“There’s also the element of educating craft brewers on how to use wet hops. Usually, you also have to burn it and ‘kiln’ it to dry it, and then you palletise it and send it to crop brewers. That’s what they’re used to. But wet, green hop is something that you also have to teach craft brewers how to use because it gets stuck into their system.”
READ ALSO: Hydroponics: Here’s what you need to know
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