Help a new hop gardener out. Where to plant?

[pr0vidence]

Hey guys!

I'm calling on your expertise. I am not a great gardener, so I am having trouble deciding where to plant the rhizomes I just received in the mail. Here is a basic drawing of my back yard.

The way I see it, there are 2 places to plant the rhizomes. The first is by the deck (red dotted area). The deck is one level, about 6" off the ground. I could attach some sort of lattice or other support structure to the deck to allow the hop vines to grow against. The problem with the deck might be the amount of sun exposure. Given the orientation of the house, the sun rises on the front side of the house and doesn't fully cover the back yard until 11 or 12. Then, the yard gets a few solid hours of sun, then, the sun dips behind the tree near the shed around 4-5pm. The second place is by the tree (blue dotted area). I understand it looks like an odd place, but the tree is about 80 feet tall with no branches on the lower 40 feet or so. The idea here is I can tie a string around the trunk of the tree 10-15' up, and then run strings down to where the rhizomes would be planted, and the vines can grow up the string to the tree. Here, the sun peeks over the house and would hit the vines earlier than they would by the deck, also they might see an extra hour or two of sun overall before the sun goes behind the tree.

Any other info or questions you might have about the property I can answer. The spot off by the tree kind of feels like it's in the middle of the yard. It would also be harder to get the rhizomes planted the requisite space apart for the two different varieties I have. OTOH, down by the deck has some fairly hard packed soil, which has a fair amount of gravel in it from the installation of the deck, also there is a curtain drain running around the house, to keep water moving (the property is on a bit of a slope running from the end of the back down downhill to the bottom of the front yard) so the soil is extremely well drained by the deck, but again, quite a few of rocks.

Thoughts?

thanks
-pr0v

 

[Brakeman_Brewing]

This isnt really directed towards just hop gardening, but more general gardening: One thing about planting around the tree is that a tree of that size is going to have a massive root system which could overpower the rhizomes as they root in.

 

[pr0vidence]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I had considered that as well but was thinking maybe a tree that size the root structure is so deep it would not interfere with the smaller root structure of the hop plants. I'm probably wrong, though.

 

[ChrisS68]

Is there any reason you don't want to plant along the South (left) side of your property? Say, on the side of the house or the shed, or maybe somewhere in-between?

Chris

 

[pr0vidence]

Hmm. I had not considered that. the houses are pretty close to the property lines on either side in my neighborhood and my neighbors house is right there. There are also 4 trees the same size as the tree in the back yard (monstrous 80ish foot oaks and maples) in the front yard. Basically, the back yard gets more sun than anywhere else on the property as far as I know. But I never really monitored the sun on the south side of the house. I could plant there if there's sun exposure.

By the shed is all shade pretty much all the time, besides my tree, the neighbors behind me all have trees as well. The side of the shed virtually never sees any sun. That won't work at all.

 

[Brakeman_Brewing]

Any reason you need to use an exsisting structure as a trellis? What about tilling up some space to the right of that tree and making a couple of dirt mounts around a pole? Make a maypole type setup.

I guess sun exposure is probably the first thing youll want to get figured out before doing any of these.

 

[EvilTOJ]

The south side would be your best bet if you can manage it. Hops go big on everything (sunlight, nutrients, water, growth) so the more sun the better. However, if you do have to plant where sunlight is less than optimal, you'll still get a good yield, just not as much as you could have.