The hops are up!

A warm north bay area winter spring has my hops popping up! Photos to come.

I'm up in the NW Bremerton WA and mine are sprouting too. I'll post some pics later today.

These are my plants and I still need to put them in bigger pots and watch them grow.

Wow, did you just select every rhizome available to plant Wilden? You have a pretty huge variety there.

Smerfs8485 said:

I'm up in the NW Bremerton WA and mine are sprouting too. I'll post some pics later today.

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I'm near Bremerton and hope to plant rhizomes by this weekend. How long have yours been up?

Well these two are my last years plants. It was two or three weeks ago when they first started popping up now they are three feet tall if i hold them straight up. I need to build the trellis for these guys this weekend. Ill be planting two other kinds this year too.

FuzzeWuzze said:

Wow, did you just select every rhizome available to plant Wilden? You have a pretty huge variety there.

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Actually yes I did. I'm also adding six more types this year for a total of 17. The following types are being added.
COLUMBUS
FUGGLE
GLACIER
GOLDINGS
HALLERTAU (US)
TETTNANG
I just have to free up some pots to plant them in first planning on having them in today or this weekend.

Some pictures of the hops before trimming. Trimming on second year and older hops creates more uniform and productive growth, or so I've read.

A sharp pair of pruners and 15 minutes of work yields clean beds. At the end of April or mid may ill select the six of the strongest bines per plant and cut the rest. Ill keep the strongest three strung up and the weaker three on ground as possible replacements if a bine fails.

Are those bins like 2ftx2ftx5ft? Being that they seem to be on concrete, they probably aren't bottomless. And you have ~4 different varieties in each bin? I'm no hop expert, but I think you are really crowding those babies. Everything I've read says you need at least 5ft between different varieties, and 3 ft between plantings of the same variety. They also have very big root systems, so you need a lot of room for them to grow down too. If you don't move those, I'm pretty sure you are going to have a big mess on your hands. But again, I'm no hop expert. I plan on growing my first this year....

reverendj1 said:

Are those bins like 2ftx2ftx5ft? Being that they seem to be on concrete, they probably aren't bottomless. And you have ~4 different varieties in each bin? I'm no hop expert, but I think you are really crowding those babies. Everything I've read says you need at least 5ft between different varieties, and 3 ft between plantings of the same variety. They also have very big root systems, so you need a lot of room for them to grow down too. If you don't move those, I'm pretty sure you are going to have a big mess on your hands. But again, I'm no hop expert. I plan on growing my first this year....

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They are indeed a bit crowded as I found out last year. Unfortunately the is all the space I have for the time being. The two smaller containers are 2x2x6 and the larger one is 2x2x8. Because they are so close together I will be pruning and training aggressively this year. The bins are slightly off the ground with bung in the back removed and they have about a dozen holes in the bottom of each for drainage. There are 4 in one of the small ones six in the larger one and only one in the last one due to limited light. I choose to plant like this because I rent and wanted to be able to move them somewhat easily.

New hops are potted up! Need to get a little more soil to top them off as well as some Gorilla Hair mulch to go on top. After they start to sprout ill hit them with some Growers Secret which I had great success with last year.

Just a heads up about gorilla hair (shredded redwood) as a mulch; it robs the soil of Nitrogen. A better mulch to use for water retention and even as a moderate feeder through watering would be composted green waste.

Snubnoze707 said:

Just a heads up about gorilla hair (shredded redwood) as a mulch; it robs the soil of Nitrogen. A better mulch to use for water retention and even as a moderate feeder through watering would be composted green waste.

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I assume you are referring to the fact that the mulch inhabits the growth of nitrogen producing bacteria? I'm not to concerned about that as the soil has been uncover up until about a week ago. I'm not too concerned about the soil fertility as It started as a 50/50 blend of high test compost and sandy loam last springing and received regular liquid organic 5-2-1 fertilizer applications through out the growing season as it will this season as well.

My fuggle and centennial are popping up! I planted 4 chinook rhizomes this year as well.



Fuggle



Centennial

Looks great hop hero! Weather report says I should get some rain this Wednesday so my hops should be back up in a week or two. Keep the photos coming everyone!

Some new pictures

Did you have the overhead horizontal lines last year? If so, was it relatively easy to train them? Sure would look pretty having a ceiling of bines!

I did have the same lines last year. The majority of my first years just reached to the top of the vertical lines. The hops that did go horizontal were a bit of pain as they naturally wanted to climb towards the sun. To make things easier this year a picked up a roll of vegetable twist ties from my local hardware store to help keep things moving along the line.

There is some pruning my future...
















The new babies are starting to get going too...

Im out of space what do I do now. My vines are sticking up 8inches on top.

Smerfs8485 said:

Im out of space what do I do now. My vines are sticking up 8inches on top.

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Two choices really. Either add more vertical room for the hops to climb by moving the pot near the side of a building or tall and adding cord to climb. Or setting up a similar pot and pole rig and setting it 10 or more feet from the hops and tie some cord between top of the two poles and train the hops horizontally.

In my own set up I had to train horizontally. My hops have about 6 feet of vertical before I start to train them. Training is a time consuming endeavor as hops rapid growth rate means the devils always reach up for the sun. At present I have to train twice a week and I expect that to increase as the hops really hit their stride.

So I decided to do the horizontal like you said. Got the pots at lower ground since my front yard has a slight slope down. Then ran some line from the top of the hops to the top of my roof. I only got a one story house and its not that tall but I got another 15ft to train them horizontal. Also got another line from the pole in the center to a stake in the ground so that the weight of the hops don't pull it down. I hope this works or ill be in for a big surprise.

Super duper. I'm bored to go Eminonu to find hops.

I just started this year with growing hops. I have 3 going now: Nugget, Willamette, and sunbeam. I used some mushroom compost and potting soil to get them going. I've been watering quite a bit when its dry. I planted in mid april, and they're already going nuts. I hope that I get some good output this year!

Sorry about the pics. The app keeps crashing and duplicating pics. It also won't rotate them. I guess tilt your head

Thats awesome! I want to move north just to grow hops. Its tough in socal

Starting to show lots of flowers on the centennial hop vines. Supper Excited:rockin:

Chinooks. Other are coming along more pics soon.

My fuggle is going crazy now. Shooting bines all over the place.