DrJerryrigger
Well-Known Member
Ive just had a quick read and look at your post and the first thing that springs to mind is the quality of your soil. To be honest it looks terrible. You really need to get some well rotted organic material in there, and I mean bucket loads.
Excellent trellis though.
I was thinking the same thing. The trellis is amazing, if your soil was equally over engineered then you'd get spectacular results.
I know someone who planted some hops last spring. He didn't train them, just put them next to an existing trellis. But he has good soil, and dumped a lot of composed cow poop on them. He had a spectacular yield from first year plants. They would have done even better had they been trained on a proper trellis.
Hops suck up a lot of nutrients if they can which is a little tricky with a perennial. You can get a great yield by dumping lots of chemical fertilizer on them, but that will weaken the soil, and in the years to come your yield will go down even with the same chemical additions. The best approach is to get the soil in really good shape before planting, and add more compost/poop every year. If your starting with not so great soil it's good to till in lots of good stuff (like compost), and get some of it deep (18 in or more). Since you already have plants in there you'll have to decide if you want to dig them up (which damages the large root structure they've made), or to just try to improve the soil in a less invasive way (which doesn't work as well). I can't say which would be better for you next year, but digging it all up would likely be better 3 years from now. But at the very least, put a few inches of composed cow poop down in the spring.