How to Grow Hops

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Have some wild hops. Transplanted some rhizomes to our back yard last year and the hop plants are doing well. We planted them last fall and want to transplant more rhizomes. .

How to tell female from female rhizomes? Want to plant only female rhizomes.

Is the fall the best time to plant them or should we wait until the spring?
 
If they have cones, they're females, just dig away! If there's a male mixed in, that could be a problem. Planting in the Fall has the advantage of the rhizomes rooting until the soil freezes which will give you a big head start next year.
 
i would like to try growing hops but i want an addition of something aesthetic. I am thinking of 4 posts in the ground forming a square and having string cover 3 sides and the top. I'm hoping to end up with what looks like a storage building with the door open. would that be at all possible?
 
I planted 5 Cascades rhizomes in the the spring this year and will eventually get about 3 oz. after drying to use.


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To anyone who may see this. It has been some time since anyone has posted on this subject. I started growing hops, Cascade, Fuggle and Northern Brewer. The Cascade is doing the best, but should I dig them up each winter to replant them or not. I was thinking of doing so due to the high amount of clay in the Arizona soil. My thought was to add to the soil for drainage, that and maybe just grow Cascade.
 
To anyone who may see this. It has been some time since anyone has posted on this subject. I started growing hops, Cascade, Fuggle and Northern Brewer. The Cascade is doing the best, but should I dig them up each winter to replant them or not. I was thinking of doing so due to the high amount of clay in the Arizona soil. My thought was to add to the soil for drainage, that and maybe just grow Cascade.

I think digging them up would only cause them unnecessary stress. I've certainly never heard of it. If they can survive harsh winters they should be fine in Arizona. They really are just weeds so can flourish nearly anywhere.
 
Hey, if anybody has a PDF or fantastic link of how to grow or maintain hops, I would sincerely appreciate a PM! Thanks
 
Thanks, I will dig them up because the Fuggle and Northern Brewer did not do so well. I will use the Cascade rhizomes across the three planters this fall as some stated in #82 to give them time to get a good root base. It will not get real cold here until late December. Thanks again, and happy brewing.
 
I am excited to get growing my hops...I have four rhizomes, two Cascades, one Chinook and one Sterling...I am starting with just the four for now to see how it goes...

I have a 35' by 50' area...my Trellis will be 18' high and will be a T type trellis...the soil is rich river bottom and I will be mixing in more nutrient rich compost from my stalls...trick now is to keep the goats and cattle out...fence will be up and have hot wire around it...the plants will be going east to west to get full sun...

I do have some issues with moles and voles...Does anyone have tips on how to rid or keep the little "so-n-so's" from eating my new plants...Deer will stay away since I have hot wire...as will the cattle and goats...
 
Omg goats- i heard thet eat everything. Lol as for moles- get rid of the grubs and the moles will leave. Maybe use a chemical grub product or use bt for a more organic approach
 
I used to be a pest control guy. We used a product called 'Answer blox'. They came in a small bucket and looked like two green snickers bars linked together like a kit-kat. (I like chocolate). I would find a tunnel a ways away from the gopher mounds using a sharp rod. (You can feel the holow space in most moist ground). Then dig a circular wedge of earth out with a spade shovel, revealing the tunnel on both sides of the hole. The bar of poison is then broken in half (like I said, like a kit-kat) and one piece is put into each tunnel. The wedge of dirt is then put back in place (or filled in if the dirt is more like a sand or is dry). When the gopher (or mole) reaches the blockage in the tunnel and realize its food (there are all kinds of nut crunchies is the poison block) they pull it back to thier food stash. This gives you some residual killing action if another gopher moves in after the first one dies.

Or:
You could build planter boxes with hardware cloth/chicken wire /cardboard ect. bottoms? (Exclusion is the most efective type of pest control). ����
 
OK, I have to ask (can't be arsed to look through the search results this late, sorry) - can a hop bine grow up a tree? I see such things all the time here in NC, like poison ivy & other plants just running up a tree.

I only ask as the only place in my yard that gets a good amount of sun is down by the dock on the lake I live on, and I can't put up a line or a trellis but there is a nice tree (IDK what kind) that would make for a great place for the bine to climb up on to.
 
Yes but it's almost impossible to get it down to harvest. Plus the cones will be at the top which could be 30 feet up or more.

Can you run a line from the tree down at an angle? Then you could harvest some.
 
Well, it isn't actually "my" yard, and IDK of the homeowner would allow that. A vine growing up a tree would not bother her, but line coming out of the ground tied to the tree probably would.

Thanks for the answer to my question!
 
The problem with the bine growing up the tree is unless you are going to climb the tree and unwrap it every year...1. you loose a lot of harvest and 2. after a few years, the tree is covered in dead bines.

They won't kill the tree like some invasive species but I've seen trees with wild hops growing on them where it is hard to see the original tree. She would probably prefer the twine unless she' into bine covered trees.
 
I will admit - she doesn't even like the tree, as it was a volunteer and it has grown large very rapidly. According to her, the tree is not 15 years old, it's 35-40 feet tall and the trunk is over a foot in diameter. If the bines were live, she might think it is more attractive, but the dead bones probably wouldn't go over well either.

Dang... I'll just have to wait to try and grow my own hops later.
 
I have a tree with a branch as out 30 feet high that stretches almost over the garden. I am attaching a pulley to the branch and will pull all my twines up with a piece of steel cable. I am thinking of putting a weight in the other end so it can adjust for the wind. (Also some fishing line near the 20 foot point to pull the twine apart a bit.)

Crazy ideas for a few hop plants, my wife thinks I may have crossed some kind of line.

TOM
 
I have a tree with a branch as out 30 feet high that stretches almost over the garden. I am attaching a pulley to the branch and will pull all my twines up with a piece of steel cable. I am thinking of putting a weight in the other end so it can adjust for the wind. (Also some fishing line near the 20 foot point to pull the twine apart a bit.)

Crazy ideas for a few hop plants, my wife thinks I may have crossed some kind of line.

TOM

Same here, my wife thinks I spend more time with my hops than her. BTW here it is as of tonight

View attachment 1431318504770.jpg
 
I have a tree with a branch as out 30 feet high that stretches almost over the garden. I am attaching a pulley to the branch and will pull all my twines up with a piece of steel cable. I am thinking of putting a weight in the other end so it can adjust for the wind. (Also some fishing line near the 20 foot point to pull the twine apart a bit.)

Crazy ideas for a few hop plants, my wife thinks I may have crossed some kind of line.

TOM

My wife thinks I spend more time on my hops

View attachment 1431318576445.jpg
 
So excited to be here! I'm in Tx just north of Austin and South of Waco, very central. In my case I'm the wife whose crazy hair brained idea it is to grow our own hops this spring!

I planted my rhizomes a little over two weeks ago in small half gallon buckets and they have sprung up so fast!

I strung up some twine on our fence and I plan to train them to climb horizontally with a slight incline.

From Left to Right in this picture I've got Willamette, Centennial, Cascade and Mt Hood.

They are getting transplanted to Five Gallon buckets today. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1431898495.175147.jpg
 
If you still have a grow it yourself hops manual, i'd like a copy. wanting to grow some hops in ks. i see this post is from 2008! There is always HOPe!
 
I'm growing hops for the first time and I noticed my Chinook vine split a couple inches above the soil (rather than a new vine coming up from the soil). Should I let these 2 continue to grow or should I prune it such that only the stronger one continues to grow?
 
My first post on homebrewtalk and rather than start a new thread, will just add on here since it seems topically relevant.
First, new to growing hops, though I'm an avid gardener in western PA. Bought chinook and cascade at a local garden supply in early May and planted them in large grow bags at ground level and am training them up the side of my deck/porch with a total height of about 20 feet. After reading a bunch of posts, it seemed like this would be more than adequate for first year hops grown in pots. The chinook are now well over the top of my roof (20-25 feet in 1 ½ months) and the cascade has sent out 4 bines, most of which are 3-10 feet high.

1) These babies are going to keep gaining height for another month or so before they put energy into hops, right?

2) For those that let them grow crazy in a tangle, how hard is it to pull the tangle down? I'm kind of worried they will just grow over this roof and it will be very difficult to pull them down, especially since there are some cables running along this roof.

3) For those that trim the main shoot, what do you do? Just cut it with clippers? Will this make more lateral shoots and therefore more hops?

4) How big do those lateral shoots grow? I have a few that are now a foot long and they don't seem to be stopping. Should I just tangle them back onto the main twine?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I can't find the pdfs on growing hops that people keep referencing in the old threads (they've been taken down) and the chinook is just taking over the world.

Convinced that Jack and the beanstalk was really written about a hop plant.
Thanks!
 
I keep reading a lot about putting the rhisome in the ground or large pot for raised bed type growth. I can't decide which would be better and if I did a pot how big should I go (how small is too small)?
 
I keep reading a lot about putting the rhisome in the ground or large pot for raised bed type growth. I can't decide which would be better and if I did a pot how big should I go (how small is too small)?

The ground would be better in general as they produce quite large root systems in nature. Hops will eventually become root bound when grown in a container so you can expect your results to be better as the size of your container increases. Half of a whiskey barrel will generally give you 2-3 years of room.
 
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