Growing roots

[rollinred]

Hello everyone. I know this topic has been discussed before but searches have yielded me know results.

Quick background. I have one 2 year centennial, 2 second year cascades in which I dug up the first year after it sprouted and split in half to give me two plants. All are doing very well.

When our grooming and pulling up grass around the plants last night I accidentally yanked up a 2 foot long centennial root that broke off so I figured what better time than now to attempt using it to start some more.

It was a very thin root and likely will not even give me one plant but I was alright with experimenting.

I was thinking that in the future I should know what the best plan of action is here. I just cut the root into a few pieces and planted them in some planters filled with good soil. Keep them a little moist and hope for the best was my initial assumption since this is exactly what I did with my first year cascade and it is doing well. Should I have put them inside in a bottle of water as I have seen others do or what is your best suggestion for giving these the best possibility at a new life?

 

[B-Hoppy]

what you yanked up was probably gonna turn into a rhizome if you would have left it until next year. there's no problem of putting it into some soil now and keeping it moist until you see it start up again. at that point you can plant it in the ground or keep it in a pot until fall - then plant it in a prepared spot. i am assuming there was a green tip (growing point) at the end of it farthest away from the crown, if not, it may just have been a root close to the surface. good luck.

 

[rollinred]

Yeah. I know it was a root close to the surface.

Last year when I had my cascade in a bucket for initial sprouting I dug down and found a 1 inch section of root and cut it off when the rhizome only had one shoot that was about 2 inches long. I took that root section and planted it elsewhere and it grew about 2 feet last year. This year it has put up 10 shoots already and is growing well.

I have asked this question before and I think people get confused by what I am asking. What I am trying to do is basically take a non-established plant and cut its roots to get more plants. But not in the conventional way of doing it from large roots but from the smaller root sections. I wish I had known it was so easy to make one rhizome produce many other plants like I did with the cascade because I would have done it last year and got like 5 plants from each rhizome in the first year, even if they did not produce for the first couple years.

Anyway, I cut up that centennial root and planted it in several pots. I also dug around where I had one of the cascades last year and found two 3 foot sections of root and planted those closer to the surface. Hopefully a small root hair will find its way to the surface and get the boost from the oxygen and sun and give me a few more plants.

Long story short, it is possible that I am doing something that no one has tried since I could care less if my main hop plants produce or even die. I am trying to make as many plants as quickly as I possibly can from one rhizome. If all of my experiments work I will get 15 from two rhizomes in 1.5 years. I was just asking what is the best strategy for growing more plants from cuttings and newer root sections.

 

[B-Hoppy]

a root is a structure the plant uses to acquire moisture and nutrients from the soil. it has no vegetative buds on it, meaning that it cannot produce new plants. a rhizome is an underground shoot, which contains buds which when sprouted, will have the ability to produce new plants. what you cut last year was a new shoot that would have grown into an aboveground vine. when the vine died back in the fall, the remainder (which was still under ground) would have been considered a RHIZOME which had buds on it that were capable of sprouting and producing new vines. this is what you buy and plant in the spring to allow those buds to sprout and grow into the vines that produce your hops. it is very easy to produce new plants from 'sprouts/shoots' off of the main rhizome but as you say, you won't have much of a crop from the main planting. i hope that makes some sense. have fun.

 

[rollinred]

So what is the best way of producing new plants from the shoots? There is little to no root structure on them so how do you go about doing this?

 

[B-Hoppy]

just keep doin' what you're doin'. apparently you've been successful in the past, so keep on keepin' on man!

 

[david_42]

Rhizomes are harvested by cutting around a plant about 2 feet from the main root. You can also make new plants in the Fall by burying your bines a couple inches down. Just bury the main bine and leave the sidearms and leave on the surface. You can also take a row of pots and tuck the bine into one every couple feet.