To the best of my knowledge the only place which hops are grown in South Africa (or for that matter Southern Africa) is a small area between George and Oudtshoorn in the Southern Cape. I seem to recall reading somewhere that once up a time they used to grow some in the Zimbabwe highlands but thinks its highly unlikely that this is still the case seeing that Zimbabwe can't even grow sufficient crops to feed itself these days.
On our way back home from Cape Town we passed through this area and I noticed for the first time road signs showing it as the hop route. Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop and enquire as to whether any of the farms offered tours, but will definitely do so the next time I'm in the area.
There has been some discussion of late on the use of lighting when growing hops outside of the traditional hop growing areas of the world. Lights are used extensively in this area for growing hops and even though at this time of the year the hops have died back, I thought it may be of interest to anyone who grows hops to see a photo of the lights used in the hop fields.
2 comments:
Thanks for the pic.
I use a 150W mercury floodlight here in Gauteng, and it worked well. I had a harvest for the first time in 3 years or so. I previously used an energy saver 2 x 20W floodlight, which was not strong enough. I notice these lights are far apart! Must be pretty powerful.
Mike
That's very interesting to see that the lights can be spaced so far apart. This will be encouraging to some of the members of my Grow-Hops Yahoo Group; there have been a number of inquiries from members in the southern U.S. where lights would probably be needed, as well. Mike is a member of our group, too, and we now have 786 members from all around the world. If anyone is interested, please visit us at www.tinyurl.com/3au2uv
Cheers.
Bill Velek
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