Surprise hop grower!

A little background first:

I thought about growing hops before but decided I don't have the space to put up a tall-ass pole for growing.

Fast forward to this weekend, and my fiance had her bridal shower. One of the gifts to her (for me ) was a Cascade hops plant. I got pretty excited and started thinking how I can plant this and allow it to grow the way it's meant to.

I am thinking about letting it take over my gateway trellis (or whatever its called). Similar to this :



About 2.5' wide, 7.5' tall, and goes over a sidewalk. I know 7' isn't that high for a hops vine, but I was kinda hoping it would take the width as well. I also thought about making a few foot extension on the top of it for the vines to grow a little taller. Maybe put a 4' pole in the middle with a cable going to a corner. That would give it 12' of growth.

So the question is, should I just quit and be sad, or try to make this work, and see if the hops will take the width of the arbor as well?

So, is this a field plant - a whole crown?
You could split it and plant the halves on each side.

When they get going next year you can train bines to do pretty much whatever you want. Send four up each side for coverage and let them do battle at the top.

Otoh, if this is a rhizome, splitting it is risky if you don't know what to look for, and as a first-year plant it's going to be bine-count-challenged for the first growing year...

Cheers!

Well that was brief. Was unable to water it for one day and it died. Oh well.

I would be shocked to see it died in one day but I don't know if you had just a rhizome or a whole plant.

I would suggest weaving the hop in and out of the wood. You'll easily fit 10' of hop growing in that structure.

It was still in the small pot it came in, so the soil dried pretty quickly. It looks like it was 1 plant and 1 rhizome. I put it in a big pot inside in full sun to see if I can bring it back to life.