Friend wants hops- too late to divide?

I'm in Wisconsin, and we've had an unseasonably warm spring. Our hops is already 12 feet tall...... Also, we planted it about 5 years ago. Our friends use it to homebrew, but we just use it for covering/decoration. It's beautiful!

We have another friend that wants some of the hops for her yard. I would normally not have an issue with this, however it's the time of year that's making me nervous. I want to tell them to wait until late fall or early spring, but my wife is telling me that we should do it now and it's not a problem.

If I try to dig some up now and "divide" it, #1-- will the transplanted part have ANY chance... and #2-- won't that potentially ruin what hops I already have on our trellis?!

Has anyone ever divided when it's 12+ feel tall and 90 degrees outside?

Thanks!

Any time you dig up the roots of a plant, you want the plant to be dormant. Otherwise you're putting a lot of actively growing biomass under a lot of stress.

Unless you owe these friends big-time - did they rescue your firstborn from the clutches of a ravenous bear, or something like that? Tell them you'd be more than happy to accomodate them in late fall or early spring.

like frazier said, you'll be putting the plant under a BUNCH of stress. i doubt if it would harm the 6 year old crown to the point of killing it but would possibly severely damage the growth you already have up, i've never had to do this type of pruning. i would tell her that you could lop off a chunk of the crown and let her have it this fall, but for now, suggest that she orders a few roots from freshops or someone else who still has them.

Stick your shovel in about 2 ft from the plant, then dig 3-4" down going radially away from the plant. If you don't find a rhizome, rotate 20 degrees and repeat. A five-year old plant should have roots out 4-5 feet. I did this for a friend two years ago and the cuttings did better than the main plant! He's in the middle of the Willamette Valley and I'm in the coastal range.

If you don't score after two tries, tell them they will have to wait.

I've been growing some hop starters for friends lately from the bins I cut off that I don't want. When the extra bine gets a couple of inches long I just pull it up until I see little white roots shooting of the main stem I cut it off and plant it in a small pot and keep it good and wet most of them do real well.
My second year plants are 3 ft above my 18ft cable already they are going crazy.

Pat

david_42 said:

Stick your shovel in about 2 ft from the plant, then dig 3-4" down going radially away from the plant.

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I have three hop hills that are spreading, and if I had some place to put them I would do exactly as david_42 says. There are some shoots a foot or more outside the 2' radius that I intended the hops to be in, so they are getting whacked by the mower. I'm certain they could be dug up and transplanted. I do the same thing each year with my raspberries (which propagate aggressively via rhizomes as well).

That said, I had to wait a bit to get a few bines that seemed to take over, and the best bines on my Liberty were actually some of the runaways. The tallest bine I have is about 12' today and that's after it covered 3-4' horizontally to get to the strings.

If you have a good bine to dig up and move it may still produce a little bit this year since the growing season is so advanced. I think my hops stopped growing up about the 4th of July last year so there's still 5+ weeks of growing season...and that Liberty put on 6-12" a day in the past week.