Create your own beer garden – hops are easy to grow and will keep you in tasty ale

To make home-brewed beer, why not grow your own hops? They’re easy to propagate from a rhizome or stem cutting, though they need plenty of room

My partner’s childhood home had a collection of beer barrels, each at a different stage of the brewing process, with one always ready to taste. When we moved out of our tiny flat and into a house, a brewing kit arrived in the post as a housewarming gift from his parents, soon followed by a small hop plant from an old friend, which now takes up more room than anything else in the veg patch.

This perennial has proved easy to grow. Once established, you can expect a flush of bines (similar to vines) to emerge every spring, bearing hop flowers, or “cones”, which are ready to be picked about now.