Large yards rarely use rhizomes for a few reasons. As you mentioned they recommend planting 2, 3, sometimes 4 per hill to help guarantee the best possible take rate for a consistent looking yard. The cost does add up. This is why companies like ours offer plant material. One live plant per hill that prices out the same as 2-3 rhizomes per hill. 99% take rate for a perfectly uniform field.
Where the rhizomes are sourced from is also huge. A local hop yard would be best so you know the age and quality of the plants they are sourced from. Varieties like Cascade have roughly an 8 or so year life in a commercial field before yields decrease due to age and virus load naturally acquired by the plants. If your unfortunate enough to be obtaining your rhizomes unknowingly from an old field out west that's being plowed under you're starting with heavy disease loaded poor producing material. Rhizomes are not new and fresh simply because you are growing them for the first time, they are a piece of the plant directly out of the older field and carry with them disease and virus.
The healthiest planting material you can obtain will be propagated from Virus indexed stock with VF numbers obtained from the national clean plant network. The material is not much more expensive than rhizomes and offers far superior growing, yield, vigor, uniformity, etc.
This would be the best option always.
2nd best is locally obtained rhizomes from a relatively new yard. <--- Provided this yard was just planted with clean plant material.
:rockin:
Large yards rarely use rhizomes for a few reasons. As you mentioned they recommend planting 2, 3, sometimes 4 per hill to help guarantee the best possible take rate for a consistent looking yard. The cost does add up. This is why companies like ours offer plant material. One live plant per hill that prices out the same as 2-3 rhizomes per hill. 99% take rate for a perfectly uniform field.
Where the rhizomes are sourced from is also huge. A local hop yard would be best so you know the age and quality of the plants they are sourced from. Varieties like Cascade have roughly an 8 or so year life in a commercial field before yields decrease due to age and virus load naturally acquired by the plants. If your unfortunate enough to be obtaining your rhizomes unknowingly from an old field out west that's being plowed under you're starting with heavy disease loaded poor producing material. Rhizomes are not new and fresh simply because you are growing them for the first time, they are a piece of the plant directly out of the older field and carry with them disease and virus.
The healthiest planting material you can obtain will be propagated from Virus indexed stock with VF numbers obtained from the national clean plant network. The material is not much more expensive than rhizomes and offers far superior growing, yield, vigor, uniformity, etc.
This would be the best option always.
2nd best is locally obtained rhizomes from a relatively new yard. <--- Provided this yard was just planted with clean plant material.
:rockin:
