Hops Growing at Robbinsdale’s Water Treatment Plant
Vines cover the south-facing exterior wall of the new Robbinsdale Water Treatment plant.
Robbinsdale’s public works director, Richard McCoy, inspects hops growing on the side of the city’s water treatment plant.
“I’ve heard they could go grow up to nine inches to a foot per day during the growing season,” said Public Works Director Richard McCoy as he inspected the vines. “Given that these were only planted in April, they’ve created quite the biomass in that time since they went into the ground.”
The vines are not invasive. In fact, they’re there quite on purpose.
“It has probably been in play since we started designing the plant a few years ago–the idea being we have this big plain wall here, so it’s good to break up this plain wall by having a bit of vegetation growing on it,” said McCoy. “So what better plant to put there than fast-growing hops that can be used for things like brewing beer?”
The city planted three varieties of hops–Cascade, Columbus, and Comet–on three trellises, and in a few years they may bear fruit enough to process into beer.
“Hopefully we can work some deals with some local breweries that might be interested in taking some hops and creating a limited edition or incorporate into their regular brewing schedule and come up with something that’s grown right here,” said McCoy. “They’re doing pretty darn well right now. They look fairly healthy, they’ve got good coverage on the trellises. Let them get established and we’ll see how we go from there.”
