Rhizomes after second year?

My dad has cascade, centennial, columbus hops that will be on their third year this year. They all grew pretty well last year, with strong yields. I am building a hop garden and was hoping to plant two rhizomes from one of these varieties (haven't decided which yet) along with the 3 other varieties I bought.

I've read conflicting instructions, some saying to wait until after the 3rd year and some saying to wait until after the 2nd year to prune off roots. Do you think I could get good rhizomes off of his plants right now without hurting his plants? Or should I just order some more?

If I do prune them, I just cut in a 1.5 foot diameter circle around the original growth and then take whatever i find that looks like new growth and throw it in the ground at my place, right?

Thanks for all of the help so far. I'm putting my saaz and tettnanger rhizomes in the ground today. Let's hope they grow, I picked some hard ones to start out with.

If they're big enough to throw out rhizomes that means they have enough energy to do what they have to do, produce a crop. The excess energy materializes as rhizomes which can be lopped of and used to start new plants with, just like you described. Go for it!

if there aren't any rhizomes you can always take cuttings from some of the shoots that pop up. It's the same process that you'd use to clone any other plant.

Wow, these things are weeds for sure. We found some roots that must have gone 10 feet from the original planting site on a plant that only has seen two growing seasons.

We cut most of this root since it had gone into his tomato garden and he was going to till it soon anyway. So I have like a 1 foot root with a buttload of 6" shoots coming out in 3 spots.

I'm tempted to just put the whole thing in the ground since I don't have room for a bunch of new plants (well, I do, but that space is accounted for). Aside from the probability of having shoots live, is there any other advantage to planting a big rhizome with a lot of shoots vs a smaller one with only a few? If it's going to get me the same thing, maybe I'll cut it into pieces and donate the other pieces.

Also, the area we live in has compacted golden sand about 10-14 inches down, so not much room for vertical roots. The plants must all have their roots going sideways for the most part. With that in mind, is the normal method of cutting everything 1.5 feet away from the ball still safe? I know that around here, with trees, you have to be more careful of the horizontal roots that pop up in your lawn and stuff because there are less/no deep ones.

As long as there's a bud on the rhizome, it has the potential to grow a new plant. The standard is to send rhizomes with two rings of buds which is a fail-safe to insure that at least one sets of buds will grow in case the other one fails for one reason or another. The rhizomes are most likely what you're seeing as the roots tend to go down. I'm not really familiar with golden sand, but it's probably more permeable than clay. Some of the roots may tend to go with the flow but I've seen roots as thick as your wrist making their way into our clay so I wouldn't be too awful concerned about doing them any harm with a yearly pruning. They're beasts if you let 'em get that way. Have fun no matter what you decide