Has anyone here rasied hops from seeds?

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BRONCOBREW

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Looking for someone that has some experience.
I am raising a few hops from seedlings this year and would appreciate any advice I can get. Mother is a Sunbeam, Father is an EKG.
 
I've had them grow from seed but it's a crapshoot. Even if both of the parents are known to be quality hops, you never know what the kids will grow up to be. One came up in my compost pile about 20 years ago and she's still around. Not a whole lot of cones but they're very fine. I was never able to determine the sex until they started showing during the Summer of the second year so you may have to wait until next season to find out if they're male or female. I can understand knowing the variety of the mother but from the limited amount of knowledge I've obtained, the fathers are usually known by a number rather than a name. Just got me thinking a little.
 
Like B-hoppy said, its a crap shoot. Even if you do know the exact lineage and it matched the exact lineage of a known variety, it probably won't come out to be exactly like the variety we know. All hops of a single variety are clones of the originally selected mother plant. That's why we use the rhizome. They will be similar, like human siblings, but not exactly the same.

Using seeds may result in something awesome or horrible. If it does turn out to be male, probably want to kill it. Any commercial hop growers in your area would be pretty pissed if you had a male. They can pollinate up to a mile or more away depending on wind direction.
 
Thanks for the advice guys.
I had a male EKG....not my fault, and I DID kill it, but apparently not soon enough. So I had these seedlings all over our sandbox near the Sunbeam Hop plant. I am waiting now to see if the new plants are male or female.

This season, I had a male Cascade Hop dome up from where I removed a Cascade plant. No Idea why it is male, but I will probably destroy it.
I live 15 miles from the nearest commercial Hop Farm.
 
This is the photo of the male cascade that I am considering destroying.....

malehop2012.jpg
 
As I tell my girls...boys are evil, except for Daddy.

Your cascade may not have been a true male but more of a hermaphidite. When they are stressed they seem to sprout boy parts. Reports vary as to whether they are sterile or not.
 
My favorite example is Cascade. Believe it or not it, it derives from Fuggle. When you consider how different these two hops are, you can get a feel for the chances you take. You might have a major winner, but most likely not.
 
It has been destroyed.......could cause problems and I could see no upside.
The flowers were cute, very tiny and gave off a very fine pollen dust........but they are in the trash now.....
 
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