New Plants.....

I just purchased my first (7) hop plants from Great Lakes and will be growing them in the basement until march when they will find their home in the hop garden. I will have them under grow lights and will be increasing the time they spend under the lights as we move towards spring. Is there a certain soil that is best for young plants? Will 1 gallon planters be big enough to get through the winter? Any other advice on hops under lights, chemical aids, what to look for as far as disease, etc is greatly appreciated!

If you plant them outside and put a layer of leaves on top of them it would probably be best.

-cheers

I concur. They need a little 'down time' to reset their cycle and get revved up for the upcoming year. You're the boss though.

Thanks for the replies...The roots on these guys are so small I'm afraid they won't make it through the winter outside!

2BeerSpeer said:

Thanks for the replies...The roots on these guys are so small I'm afraid they won't make it through the winter outside!

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That's not how they work. Rhizomes aren't like vegetables or fragile succulents.

They need the natural light and temp cycle. They need the "down time" of winter. They need to be placed in the ground and grow without being disturbed at some later time.

You are more likely to break off the 2 or 3 growth shoots they do have during transplant than they are to be damaged by winter.

It’s odd that they even had any to sell to you at this time of year. I think your best bet would be to keep them cold and moist in the frig but they may not last anyway there or in the ground right now.

Good Luck

Nickeldeposit said:

It’s odd that they even had any to sell to you at this time of year. I think your best bet would be to keep them cold and moist in the frig but they may not last anyway there or in the ground right now.

Good Luck

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I just realized that this guy bought "hop starts"... meaning just newly rooted starts without a base rhizome having yet been formed.

Seems to be a bad business practice to sell these to folks in late fall. What are they supposed to do with them until March/April? A rhizome could at least be planted int he fall and grow fine after ground thaw. A "hop start" has no rhizome.

Oh well. I suspect we'll see some posts complaining about this in about 5 months or sooner when their plants die.

They sell nationwide, I would think people who are buying need to do a little research and decide if they can grow in their area at the particular time they are ordering. I bought some in early Oct. after I saw a guy in San Deigo order some. Granted his climate and growing season was going to be way different than mine, but I wanted plants now. I know I was impatient, but they had the ones I wanted in stock and I knew it would be a risk to plant them outdoors in my area this late in the year, but I wanted to get plants going and not wait til Spring for a rhizome (or worse "out of stock" if I didn't order at the right time, which has been my experience in the past. Luckily we had some good weather and mine had a few weeks to take root and get going before the cold set in. I have since covered with straw and leaves and am waiting for Spring to see what I got. It was my risk to put them in at this time of year...the vendor did nothing wrong...they just had great plant starts available when I wanted them. I knew if I didn't get something in the ground, I would be obsessed with hop plants all winter and it would waste a ton of my time. I had my fun and got it out of my system. Now, I just have to wait to see if it was a good call or not, on my part, not the vendors

well I got mine in the mail today and they came with a note saying that they had been upgraded to mature crowns because it was so late in the fall. It says that they are in fall dormancy and that it is better to plant where they are going to live than to try inside(thanks for the good advice guys)...They are bigger than my fist and have several stems on each crown! Most of them have the bottom leaves still on the bines! They sent an extra crown in a package labeled "lucky dog, freebie" its a brewers gold, never used it yet but i'm gonna plant it too! The people I delt with were very helpful and I was probably like Hethen57 and in a lil of a rush to get some plants afraid they wouldn't be any left in spring! Now the biggest problem i have is prepping the spots these babies are gonna call home b/c they are going to run the posts of a deck that is yet to be under construction...Thanks to everyone that has responded in this thread and any other suggestions are appreciated!

ordered the starts and got the crowns.....



the other pic is kinda what i have in mind for them, just spaced out a little more.

Wow...now that is customer service! Good luck with your plants (..err "crowns"). We will have to report back on the results next year.

2beerspeer - you gotta send me a pic when you get the deck all done! I'll post it to our site. By the way we back up what we sell - if you have any problems, let me know - I'll hook you up!

I will definately be posting pics of the deck...and plants! For th record, I took my crowns out of their little sacs last night to plant them and every crown I had was bigger than the crown in the pic I uploaded! Thanks Again

Great pics, I dig the proposed deck.

So a friend just dropped some rhizomes on me and I have no idea what to do with them right now. They look pretty rough and I don't know if it is worth putting any effort into growing these. Can I get some advice?

Not a whole lot of effort required. Just dig a trench and bury them and forget about it. Next Spring, if you see them starting to sprout, you know they made it and can prepare an area to transplant if you like. That's how I got my first ones going. Never know unless you try. Adios!

Crowns are in the ground....roots are huge....The cascade is wanting to take off again where it has been mild here! I wonder if I should cut the bine off or will it just die off?

pics of my future hop garden that will climb the deck that isn't there yet! HAHA

the close up is the cascade that wants to start already...

Wish I had a back yard view like that! Beautiful!