By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

This season's crop of butternut squash is growing up a metal arbor. The trellis is thick enough to support the weight of the squash without buckling, and the squash are holding on without any help. I'm pretty in love with how well it's worked.

I'm really posting just to share the picture of the one, little squash, totally stuck in the trellis. He's wedged in tightly and won't budge.

He makes me smile. Poor guy.

by Rick LaFrentz, Sunset grounds manager

Just as there are Deadheads who follow the Grateful Dead, Parrot Heads who have a fondness for Jimmy Buffet, potheads who—well, if I have to explain...

There are also hop-heads, who have a great affection for hops.

I was amazed to find on the Internet how many home brew clubs throughout the country call themselves the Hop Heads. Interestingly, hop-heads and potheads have something in common. Hops, Humulus lupulus, and hemp, Cannabis sativa, both belong to the plant family Cannabaceae. Small world, isn't it?

Hops add balance and complexities to beer. They contain alpha acids, which add bitterness. Some varieties of hops have low alpha acids and thus add a subtle nuance to beer; those with high alphas have a much more pronounced presence. Beers with an evident malt flavor require a hop with a lower alpha content to let that style show, and your India pale ale styles require a hop with a higher alpha content.

The first recorded reference to hops was by Pliny the Elder, who died in 79 AD, so hops have been around for quite some time. The first documentation of hop cultivation was in 736.

Sunset's own hop-heads—hop harvesters, anyway—Stephanie Dean, Alan Phinney and Margo True gathered to harvest our homegrown 'Nugget' hops. I tagged along for support and to take photographs.

'Nugget' hops are known for their high alpha acid content so they are a good candidate for making a bitter beer or for adding balance to a beer with a lot of body. They are also known for their herbal, somewhat spicy aroma and flavor.

Pictured above is managing editor Alan Phinney gathering hops and doing a balancing act on the upper steps of an 8-foot ladder. Don't let OSHA catch you doing this.

Below are food editor Margo True and Test Kitchen manager Stephanie Dean diligently cutting the 'Nugget' flowers from the vines. When you have to harvest by hand it takes a great deal of concentration and precision.

We applied a couple of methods to test the hops to make sure they were mature enough to harvest. One method is to press and release a hop flower to see if it will spring back after compressing. If it does, it's ready to pick. Another test is to cut a flower in half lengthwise to view the color of the lupilins, the bittering compounds found at the base of each flower bract. If the color is a golden yellow, it's ready. You can also taste the lupilins to see if they have a distinct bitter taste on your tongue. In the case of our 'Nugget' hops, there was a very distinct bitterness so we knew that we were well on our way to harvesting the crop. You also want to pick the hops while they had a green color and not when they were tan or brown.

Because Alan is the tallest of the team, we pinned him to pick the hops on the upper part of the vines, and I might add that he did a meticulous job, considering that he was standing near the top of an 8-foot ladder. Stephanie and Margo, with their feet planted firmly on the ground, harvested the lower growing hops.

Our total bounty was about a pound. When you consider that between 2 to 3 ounces are used per 5-gallons of beer, we have the potential for one hell of a Christmas party.

Here are a portion of the hops that we harvested. Notice that the color is a fresh green. Try to harvest your hops when they are this color.

Next: drying the hops.

We concocted a drying bed, a 2-foot wide by a 4-foot long frame made of 2-by-4s with a fine mesh screen nailed to the bottom. The frame is set on bricks placed in each corner to keep it off the ground and letting air circulate underneath. We put newspapers under the frame to catch debris, then placed the hops on the screen and spread them out in a single layer. After about a week of drying we used a seal-a-meal machine to bag 2-ounce increments. The advantage to this machine is that it draws excess air out of the bags while it seals so you can retain a longer storage time. I personally have placed purchased hops in Ziploc bags and set them in the refrigerator to store, but after time air always finds a way to enter the bags and impede the freshness of the hops.

In a few weeks Team Beer will be making our next batch of beer using our first harvest of 'Nugget' hops!

If you are interested in growing your own hops you'll have to wait until spring when the new hop rhizomes hit your local home brew store. They are also available online at a variety of home brew supply sites. You should research in advance what type of hops you would like to grow. Do your homework as to what hops will grow best for you. Some varieties tend to sell out faster then others; be diligent with your research and timing.

Some advice: You will get very little hop production the first year after you plant your rhizomes. This is what we anticipated and it held true. The first year our 'Nugget' produced virtually no flowers and the hops that did develop were covered in mildew and virtually useless. This year, as I stated, we had a very bountiful harvest. You also need to consider a place where the hops can grow. Hops are a vining plant so be sure to have some form of trellis or pole for them to grow upon.

This is a hop flower that has been cut in half. Notice the golden color of the lupilins, the bittering agents of the hop flower.

Good luck all of you hop-heads out there who are interested in trying your luck at growing your own.

Don't miss: This weekend is the annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver, which has caught on in popularity since its inception in 1982 when there were 22 breweries present. Last year there 432 breweries with a total attendance of 46,000. This is the Holy Grail for hop-heads.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Last week we decided to let the hive go. We took out some of the frames that had capped drone brood, lest all those cells hatch into mite-loaded drones. We left just empty space.

This week we found that the few worker bees remaining in the hive built free comb in the empty space, and, sure enough, the cells are jammed with multiple eggs, compliments of our over-ambitious laying worker.

The bees seem—am I projecting?—sad, confused, despairing, but still doggedly (or bee-edly) going about their bee business. The bees want to persist, but without a queen they cannot. 

Veronica is still going gangbusters; we'll try again to make a split from her next spring.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator    

Our quinoa harvest dried down quite nicely and it was time to get our thresh on. The goal? Separate the quinoa seeds from the stalks.

Here's Margo explaining our various techniques:

Yes, my bag was much fuller than Margo's, though I did manage to practically have an asthma attack from all the particulate matter I generated. You can hear me hacking up a lung at around :05.

The real challenge, we've decided, is the next step. How exactly do we rid the quinoa from all the dust of crushed leaves and stems?

Here are several options we're contemplating, and we'd love to hear your ideas:

• Will rinsing it work? We have to wash it anyways to remove the saponin. Will all the powder just rise to the top?

• Should we find a screen that is the perfect size to let the dust through but retain the quinoa?

• Should we follow the advice from Seeds of Change and setup a fan to blow away the dust while praying that the quinoa drops into a container?

We're going to figure out the best method in the next few days and then proceed. This is labor intensive! I might be changing my tune on whether or not it's a good idea to grow your own quinoa at home.

Until then, here's what Associate Garden Editor, Julie Chai, has to say about quinoa:

by Brianne McElhiney,  Sunset Editorial Assistant to the editor-in-chief

Mead is not just for Renaissance Faire enthusiasts anymore.  It is also for One-Block dieters!  We have made the inaugural batch of honey wine to kick off Team Mead and we are hoping and praying that in a few months it will live up to the delicious draughts we tasted at Rabbit's Foot Meadery. 

Due to lack of space in the test kitchens and the entertaining kitchen, we decided to stir up our batch in Sunset’s new outdoor kitchen.  Incidentally, it was also about 90 degrees and sunny outside.  Maybe it was the heat or maybe the  fact that it was a Friday and we were all looking ahead to the weekend, but we wandered astray from our “Initial Game Plan”.  Perhaps some would call our actions mistakes, but I prefer to think of them as improvisations. 

-Sterilize equipment with boiling water

-Combine honey and water until the must reaches a specific gravity of 1.075 using a hydrometer

-Add White Labs Pitchable Liquid Yeast to the must

-Stir for 5 minutes to aerate

-Cover with several layers of cheesecloth and let sit for another 5 to 10 minutes.  This will allow further aeration while keeping out lots of particles and natural yeasts in the air

-Siphon into carboy leaving no more than 1 inch of room at the top

-Seal with airlock

-Cover with blanket and store in warm, dry place (Sunset prop room) for 10 Days

 Desired outcome:

-3 gallons of delicious mead.

 Actual outcome:

-5 gallons of what, thus far, smells like delicious mead.

 You may naturally wonder how 3 gallons miraculously turned into 5 gallons. The directions said, “use 5.76 lbs of honey per gallon of water".  That does not mean for a 3 gallon carboy you should use 17.28 lbs. (3 x 5.76 lbs.) of honey. Due to this error we ended up adding lots  of water in order get the specific gravity to the desired level of 1.075 (to be honest we settled for 1.080, which means our mead will have a higher alcohol content than we originally planned).  Hence, how 3 gallons of mead turned into 5 gallons.  We misread a few steps here and there, although I am hopeful that it will turn out delicious. If you decided to brew your own, here are some helpful tips to prevent bumps along the way.

 Tips:

1.  Read directions very carefully.  Perhaps read them 5-10 times.  Then read them again in between each step.  We were so excited when the must reached the appropriate specific gravity we nearly forgot to add the yeast (a key element of mead).

 2. In the end, specific gravity will be more important than poundage, so don’t worry so much about the weight of honey used.   And just so you know, you will probably never need 17.28 lbs. honey for a household batch of mead.

 3.  Add honey to water versus water to honey to prevent wasting honey

 4.  Don't wear great high heels because they are likely to get covered in honey water

 5.  Don't make mead outside on a hot day because you will be miserable (the photos are a false representation of how we felt that day)

 6.  If you decide to do it outside be sure nothing falls into your mead (i.e. leaves or bugs).  We currently have a mysterious brown fleck floating around our carboy, which may or may not have potential for causing trouble (see video) 

The primary fermentation should be subsiding this week and we will need to transfer the mead into a clean carboy.  We will also be able to take the first taste test.  Stay tuned for updates.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I found our birds panting in today's heat and captured this closeup with my iPhone while feeding them refreshing, overgrown cucumbers.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Santa Clara Valley is indeed the Garden of Heart’s Delight, particularly if you are a bee, or a beekeeper who loves honey.

Our bees have been socking away honey like crazy. Last week we pulled 8 bars of honey from Califia (our top bar hive). That amounted to 28.5 pounds processed honey. And today we took nearly a full super (7 frames) from Veronica. (Dont' worry, we left plenty in the hive for the bees to eat should there be a sudden summer dearth). Upon tasting each new harvest I pronounce it the best honey yet. Every harvest tastes different. Every harvest is delicious.

We’ve been taking honey from them all summer and I think we'll be able to take some more. Even though it's the beginning of September, there are plenty of flowers blooming to keep the girls busy. They really love the mints, basils, and salvias that are blooming all over town.

The English ivy that grows wild in every untended spot is budded up and ready to bloom. We’ve been told it doesn't make good honey—it crystallizes too fast—but the bees really love the flowers. Asters have yet to begin. Veronica has an empty super, and we’ve put more bars into Califia. We’re ready for the fall harvest.

A full frame of beautifully capped honey.