citra hop rhizomes

I know these are not the most popular hop, but i use them a lot and would like to start growing them. Ive checked a lot of stores and unable to find them. Know anywhere i can get ahold of some?

It might be a proprietary variety and not available for sale.

yeah...pretty sure they're proprietary.

I am almost 100% sure they are proprietary, and I think this will be fairly common from now on. It is like that in farming, where one company has the rights to the seed and you can only grow it with their permission.

It is a proprietary hop, us common folk can't get them.
That is the way of things.
Don't think you will be 'that guy' that is the exception to the rule. Waste of your time.
Sorry.

Someone should stake out the hop farm that grows it. At the end of the season, after the hops are harvested I'm sure they just dump the leftover vines. Maybe you can get a piece and get it to root?

JRems said:

Someone should stake out the hop farm that grows it. At the end of the season, after the hops are harvested I'm sure they just dump the leftover vines. Maybe you can get a piece and get it to root?

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The problem with being proprietary is everything is accounted for. I'm sure the fields these are grown on are fenced, I heard this about the Amarillo fields. Also, there would be no dumping of anything, they would probably grind up all the leftovers and compost or burn the bines.
When I was farming, we grew several proprietary crops, and the paperwork and monitoring that went along with it were quite the headache.

JRems said:

Someone should stake out the hop farm that grows it. At the end of the season, after the hops are harvested I'm sure they just dump the leftover vines. Maybe you can get a piece and get it to root?

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That sort of talk is "That Guy" talk. Read the above post.

Proprietary hops are proprietary because 'they' don't want us to have them. I know a lot of hop growers. None of us amateurs have proprietary hops. I've never met "That Guy". Again, sorry- don't want to burst your dreams. Just trying to save you time.

I thought Sierra Nevada has the proprietary rights to that hop. I could be wrong but if that's the case all you would need to do is go to Chico with a shovel and be able to jump high and run really fast.

I have seen hops fields in Chico and they are fenced and netted! I didn't see Citra while I was there I only saw centenniel.

friday said:

I thought Sierra Nevada has the proprietary rights to that hop. I could be wrong but if that's the case all you would need to do is go to Chico with a shovel and be able to jump high and run really fast.

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Actually, the fence isn't that tall. Rather flimsy too if you ask me. Though, after meeting the owner, he almost seems like the guy who would let you have a rhizome or two for "homebrew" purposes only. He's a huge supporter in home brewing. Heck, he started his brewery in a 600sq ft apartment above a law firm in down town chico. worth a shot at least

Try propagation from bine tips in wet hops order, I got a Simcoe to root that way last year.

LeSinge said:

Try propagation from bine tips in wet hops order, I got a Simcoe to root that way last year.

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Can you explain how you did this? I have a good plant/gardening/horticulture background but don't know what the wet hops look like? Do they just have pieces of wet bine floating around in the packages? Did you use rooting hormones?

Pete762 said:

Actually, the fence isn't that tall. Rather flimsy too if you ask me. Though, after meeting the owner, he almost seems like the guy who would let you have a rhizome or two for "homebrew" purposes only. He's a huge supporter in home brewing. Heck, he started his brewery in a 600sq ft apartment above a law firm in down town chico. worth a shot at least

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Ya I think that one lone row of cirtra hops on the end next to the fence is actually a cascade.

DrHop said:

Can you explain how you did this? I have a good plant/gardening/horticulture background but don't know what the wet hops look like? Do they just have pieces of wet bine floating around in the packages? Did you use rooting hormones?

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yeah, get your wet hop order in, a couple pounds worth, pick it up the instant it arrives...go through it collecting any bine tips, use some rooting powder, moist towel, keep warm and misted, pray for the best...do not over-fertilize until well established...I killed my first few attempts that way=sux.

LeSinge said:

yeah, get your wet hop order in, a couple pounds worth, pick it up the instant it arrives...go through it collecting any bine tips, use some rooting powder, moist towel, keep warm and misted, pray for the best...do not over-fertilize until well established...I killed my first few attempts that way=sux.

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That's awesome. I'm impressed that works. Hops really are pretty much weeds so I guess it's not so surprising. Simcoes growing fine with good yield? What climate are you in? I'm gonna have to blow a bunch of money on wet hops now...

DrHop said:

That's awesome. I'm impressed that works. Hops really are pretty much weeds so I guess it's not so surprising. Simcoes growing fine with good yield? What climate are you in? I'm gonna have to blow a bunch of money on wet hops now...

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I'm very interested in this also, but all places I've seen are showing $20 a lb for wet hops. Ehh I might take that risk for the possibility of owning my own amarillo plant.

LeSinge said:

yeah, get your wet hop order in, a couple pounds worth, pick it up the instant it arrives...go through it collecting any bine tips, use some rooting powder, moist towel, keep warm and misted, pray for the best...do not over-fertilize until well established...I killed my first few attempts that way=sux.

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Do you put the tips in soil after dipping in rooting powder?

No apparent yield on my plant yet this year, just a couple sidearms so far, everything else I've got has burrs & hops, so maybe still getting established.
Used rooting powder and moist napkin until roots formed, then light soil mix with some perlite, misting often. Did this in a temp-controlled fishtank: 10gal tank, a couple bricks, water heater, and floated the containers on the heated water...got the setup help from a cousin-grower...well, up 'til he started talking about photo-periods and all that crap. I had several of three varieties rooted, but got only one plant at the end, I think I over-fertilized too early and killed them.
I never froze the plant this winter, and maybe that's why it seems 'confused' - I read somewhere they need a cold cycle...so ???
Yeah, $20+/# is a little much, but it's the only way to get 'em this decade.

LeSinge said:

No apparent yield on my plant yet this year, just a couple sidearms so far, everything else I've got has burrs & hops, so maybe still getting established.
Used rooting powder and moist napkin until roots formed, then light soil mix with some perlite, misting often. Did this in a temp-controlled fishtank: 10gal tank, a couple bricks, water heater, and floated the containers on the heated water...got the setup help from a cousin-grower...well, up 'til he started talking about photo-periods and all that crap. I had several of three varieties rooted, but got only one plant at the end, I think I over-fertilized too early and killed them.
I never froze the plant this winter, and maybe that's why it seems 'confused' - I read somewhere they need a cold cycle...so ???
Yeah, $20+/# is a little much, but it's the only way to get 'em this decade.

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The price isn't too bad to me because you get awesome hops out of the deal. The bonus of possible hop plants made it even better.

DrHop said:

The price isn't too bad to me because you get awesome hops out of the deal. The bonus of possible hop plants made it even better.

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Yep. I might have to try this next year. Got too much going on to give this that much attention. Keep us updated on if anything happens. What I'd do for just one amarillo rhizome.

Very cool. Not sure I'd advertise this on a public internet forum though. Proprietary is still proprietary.

TyTanium said:

Very cool. Not sure I'd advertise this on a public internet forum though. Proprietary is still proprietary.

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As long as you aren't selling plants or any of your harvest I think it should be legal. Usually the royalties are charged to the sellers and harvesters. Could be wrong...

DrHop said:

As long as you aren't selling plants or any of your harvest I think it should be legal. Usually the royalties are charged to the sellers and harvesters. Could be wrong...

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I think you are wrong, based upon the precedent set my Monsanto who have sued farmers for saving propriety seed strains for replanting. If they can sue based on this, I don't see why you can't sue you for propagating a proprietary hop strain that you didn't purchase in the first place.

You probably should have kept your mouth shut on this one, as they'll be coming for you if Citra ever gets out in the wild....

broadbill said:

I think you are wrong, based upon the precedent set my Monsanto who have sued farmers for saving propriety seed strains for replanting. If they can sue based on this, I don't see why you can't sue you for propagating a proprietary hop strain that you didn't purchase in the first place.

You probably should have kept your mouth shut on this one, as they'll be coming for you if Citra ever gets out in the wild....

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Citra, Amarillo, Simcoe, El Dorado, Ahtanum, Summit, etc...all will get 'out in the wild' sooner or later, but in very small amounts. There is NO way I'm the only one to notice bine tips in my wet hops order and thought to get them rooted...and there's also very little correlation between these instances and the Monsanto deal: Monsanto distributes seeds under contracts that restrict use and 'seed saving', there is no contract real or implied with the purchase of an end-user product such as wet hops. Through $millions of campaign contributions and lobbying, Monsanto virtually Owns Gov't regulatory agencies - HBC and others not so much.
In the case of cloning plants from other plants, proprietary or not, 'fair use' rules would seem to apply, same as our ability to make digital copies of CDs and DVDs we have purchased For Our Own Use. Only if commerce begins, like if I were to sell a cloned plant, would illegality actually occur...any instance of a farmer's use of proprietary seeds/plants by its very nature is an act of commerce.
In the meantime, snip your own sidearm bine tips and practice, practice, practice!

Good post. I don't presume to know the law with this stuff. Just a word of caution. Sounds like you've done your research.

Fair use rules definately DO NOT apply, as it is not the seed that is protected, but the technology behind the seed that makes it do what it does. The breeders of Citra are not technically protecting a hop plant, they are protecting the years of breeding the Citra profile, and the only way you could get the Citra profile on one of your hops is to steal their breeding ideas and put it into your own hop plant. Monsanto gets around the fair use by this, there is nothing wrong with keeping your own seed for planting, but if the seed you planted grows up and has the same technical profiles as their seeds, you are in trouble. In fact, the deal that farmers must sign (and pay for) is called a Technology Use Agreement.

In the case of cloning plants from other plants, proprietary or not, 'fair use' rules would seem to apply, same as our ability to make digital copies of CDs and DVDs we have purchased For Our Own Use.

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The potential problem with correlating the above with the question at hand is there is no perceived gain in making a backup of media For Your Own Use. You still have the exact same set of music files, and nothing more.

In contrast, if you were to actually brew with your quasi-cloned Citra plants, you would be gaining material goods - with a net gain in value. Based on that alone, I'd be fairly confident a legal line would have been crossed...

Cheers!

Good points

question: say i get a sidearm bine tip to sprout - then what? it's august or september, isn't that too late plant them outside? i see two options:

1) plant outside, get them to grow while they can before it gets cold, and hope that they survive,
2) grow them inside for a few months, get them to go dormant in february, then plant outside in spring.

or is there another option i'm missing?

well, I lost several and only saved one, so I'm probably wrong but...I kept mine going, but went to ambient living room light & then to the basement by a window during Feb/March
The one that survived has not shown any burrs yet this year (but has sidearms)...likely confused as hell since I think they need a cold dormancy period.