I've never had this happen before but it looks like my cones are starting to form in May... Have any of you seen this? Normally it happens much later...
Flowers/Cones in May?
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PapaBearJay
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How old is the plant? You likely trained it to early, which is why it's flowering now instead of later.
PapaBearJay
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Hops came up, I cut them back. They came back again, so I cut them back again. After that I had had enough and let them grow. About 6 vines to a plant. That was about 6 weeks ago.
The tallest are over 10 feet, with lots of small flowers starting to come out.
PapaBearJay
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That's why....they shouldn't be getting trained until about now...
Where did you get that. I'm not commercial grower who is going to harvest everything at the same time. I'll be picking cones as they come ready.
PapaBearJay
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Generally speaking, early flowers tend to be aborted and subsequent yield are reduced as a result.
Can you point me to some reading material that will explain this?
PapaBearJay
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I don't have the studies in front of me but flowering is tightly regulated by photoperiod and node number in hop. If a plant is trained too early and has sufficient nodes, it becomes receptive to "short day" photoperiods. Generally, a photoperiod of 14 hrs is sufficient to induce flowering on most varieties, which means anything lower than that and plants that are big enough equals flowers!
This is overcome in more northern latitudes by pruning the plants back to time the harvest to occur following the summer solstice when the photoperiod is below a certain amount once again.
This is overcome in more northern latitudes by pruning the plants back to time the harvest to occur following the summer solstice when the photoperiod is below a certain amount once again.
OP
OP
There's a lot of good discussion in here. I always just let the hops grow as much as they want to but maybe next year I'll prune them back and see what happens. I think this is my Chinook plant. It's potted but it is about 16 feet tall. I used a flash in the photo which might have contributed to some of the odd coloring.
^ This. The plant more or less uses its runners to determine day length as the roots don't know what time of year it is. If they see daylight under 13.5-14 hours, they tend to go into flowering mode.
But now you've opened a can of worms PapaBear!
I think the diminished yield for the season is only because no one has tried to cut back early flowering bines after harvesting them before the solstice. With hops's closest cousin, you can vegetate a plant indoors during winter, flower it in spring, harvest and then re-vegetate it after the solstice without any yield or quality issues. I believe the same is possible with hops.As a test of this theory, I decided to not cut anything back this year on all 10 varieties I am running (Alpharoma, Cascade, Columbus, Multihead, Newport, Sanitam, Southern Brewer, Southern Cross, Willow Creek, Zenith). San Diego only gets 14H 10M of daylight on the solstice, so we're growing in a very different day length than the typical 16-18 hour days of the upper northern latitudes. We also don't see freezing temps, the hops still produce plenty though!
The only plant that decided to flower early was the Willow Creek (neomex) which now has 3-4 bines that are flowering. There are about 1-2 freezer bags worth of cones which are within 2 weeks of harvest by feel. The plan is to pull all the cones off and cut the flowering bines to the dirt on June 1st and allow the plant to revegetate through the longer days of the season. At the end of the normal harvest season, I will compare 2017's yields to 2016's cut-to-the-ground yields and see what we end up with.
SHAIV
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My cascade is also starting to flower now it's over 10 feet tall also. I have mine growing on the side of my house they only get the strong afternoon sun I figured that would be best because I live in the south and it's gonna be 92 today lol and it's not even summer yet. I have second year plants and my cascade and chinook did real well last year I got two harvests from first year plants. My centennial was very short and didn't produce and it's still not doing a whole lot this year it's only about 6" now after I cut it back and the bines are very thin compared to the others. You think I got a week rhizome? Or maybe centennial doesn't grow well in my climate? Idk
Voodoo, I was thinking about that myself. I've got a few fairly large hop plants growing indoors which I'm thinking of bringing outside just about now. I was hesitant because I didn't want to mess with the regular flowering, but then I thought: Well if it's photoperiod, I should be able to make it flower again? Just like we see dandelion flowering in late Fall (albeit much less than in spring). I know nothing of hop's cousin but I'll take your word for it. XD
PapaBearJay
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^ This. The plant more or less uses its runners to determine day length as the roots don't know what time of year it is. If they see daylight under 13.5-14 hours, they tend to go into flowering mode.
But now you've opened a can of worms PapaBear!
As a test of this theory, I decided to not cut anything back this year on all 10 varieties I am running (Alpharoma, Cascade, Columbus, Multihead, Newport, Sanitam, Southern Brewer, Southern Cross, Willow Creek, Zenith). San Diego only gets 14H 10M of daylight on the solstice, so we're growing in a very different day length than the typical 16-18 hour days of the upper northern latitudes. We also don't see freezing temps, the hops still produce plenty though!
The only plant that decided to flower early was the Willow Creek (neomex) which now has 3-4 bines that are flowering. There are about 1-2 freezer bags worth of cones which are within 2 weeks of harvest by feel. The plan is to pull all the cones off and cut the flowering bines to the dirt on June 1st and allow the plant to revegetate through the longer days of the season. At the end of the normal harvest season, I will compare 2017's yields to 2016's cut-to-the-ground yields and see what we end up with.
I don't disagree with you. Getting two crops is a possibility.
You've potentially confounded the issue, especially since the plant is now a year older, and it's 2 or 3 yrs old now? The plant still hasn't produce a mature yield, so you can't say whether your results are due to the treatment or plant age.
I think you should experiment with training times (after pruning) as opposed to deciding whether pruning is needed. Also, realize that in commercial production this would not be a feasible practice and not likely economically sustainable. Training and harvest are the two major inputs, both which take a great deal of time. They would be compounded on each other with stringing crews following directly behind the harvest crews in order to get stuff growing back on the strings and still produce a second crop.
The Willow Creek is in its second year though the Neomex hops produced like 3rd year plants in their 1st year for me - 7 gallon freezer bags of cones per plant. My 3rd year plants (Cascade / Columbus / Newport) all produced about 3.5-4 gallon freezer bags in their 2nd year, 1.5-2 in their 1st year. I don't know if the high production is due to them liking latitude, soil mix, sub irrigation or a combination of all of these things, but all I have for comparison is last year's yield.
I agree with you that in a commercial setting multiple harvesting wouldn't work. We're only talking about roughly 1/3rd the yield on this plant compared to last year's numbers.
I do everything wrong though, I train every bine and the bines get topped to prevent the plants from sprawling out over the roof (13' overall trellis height).
Its interesting you mentioned playing with training times. That is only partially up to me. Most of the plants (especially those developed at very high latitudes) don't require any kind of cut back and only start throwing bines as we get close to 14 hours of daylight - June 1st or so. Until that point, they develop a 4" tall shrub of shoots that refuse to add length. The Zenith hops are the one extreme example, they usually wait till July before throwing bines. On the other side of the spectrum, my Cascades are always willing to throw bines in March but won't throw cones until normal harvest times.
PapaBearJay
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The reason the Willow Creek produced so highly is likely a combination of factors and most likely a result of photoperiod adaptation and climate suitability. Comparatively, Cascade, Columbus, and Newport were all selected because of their relative performance in the PNW, not southern CA. Also, since you're topping that might be exacerbating the issue since the hops might not be reaching their full yield potential since the number of sidearms overall is reduced.
OP
OP
Some of the cones have formed into fully fledged hops. No yellow lupulin or aroma from the cones yet but it's still cool to see them bursting at the seams.
I picked some last weekend 4 ozs dry (weighed yesterday).
That is mostly from one Chinook plant where the leaves were drying out and the cones starting to dry. Not sure what is happening with it, but there are new shoots that are healthy. Not sure if the new shoots will produce more hops this year. Took some off a Cascade, which is pretty healthy.
Will be using the hops this Sunday.
SHAIV
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That's a lot! At least compared to what I get. How old are your plants? I only got 1.2 oz dry weight from 3 plants. I got more coming and another plant that's just starting to grow cones for the first time ever. I always just get up on a ladder and pick the hops off and leave the bines so I can get a second growth of hops from the same bines
