- where to grow your plant, and in what sort of soil,
- training your hops up a wall,
- what your hops look like as they develop,
- pests and problems,
- cultivating more hop plants!
The first year of hop ownership will involve a phone call or website visit to a place that sells hop rhizomes. You’ll perhaps start with one or two plant of different varieties, or enough for several acres (3,600 plants/acre will start your business), and then wait for that delivery. See Buying Your Hops.
When that knock finally
comes, you’ll open a damp package containing a portion of root,
or rhizome. Unwrap the root and take a look at it. You should
have a six-inch piece of root with one or two small buds showing.
This root needs to be planted horizontally in the ground or a large
pot, a couple of inches below the surface of the soil. The soil
should be free draining and in good condition. If it’s not in good
condition, don’t worry you’ve got years to get it into shape.
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| Hop shoots emerging in Spring. |
The plant should be … Ideally, in a sunny,
well-drained position. Commercial hop growers plant above ground in mounds or hills reaching up to 2ft high. I planted mine in an old oil canister (well washed, of course). They're tough old beasts, so no need to stress. However, if you can get them into the ground somehow, the will yield better.
Consider the site, and the height that the plant will reach in the future. Train it up anything as best you can. As the plant grows from the tip, following the sun, it has a tendancy to wind itself clockwise around things. Use this to your advantage. Some use a central pole with a wigwam of string, or a tall goalpost structure with string. Try not to use chanlink, if you can help it, as the hops will trail round it easy enough, but you'll have the devil's own job trying to coax it back out at harvest.
Your hop bine will reach its full height by mid-summer, and provided you've had sufficient daylight, little fluffy side-shoots will emerge from the top third of the plant, and it’s from these that your hop cones develop. If you get pretty Elderflower type flowers, then you've got males: consider complaining.
Consider the site, and the height that the plant will reach in the future. Train it up anything as best you can. As the plant grows from the tip, following the sun, it has a tendancy to wind itself clockwise around things. Use this to your advantage. Some use a central pole with a wigwam of string, or a tall goalpost structure with string. Try not to use chanlink, if you can help it, as the hops will trail round it easy enough, but you'll have the devil's own job trying to coax it back out at harvest.
Your hop bine will reach its full height by mid-summer, and provided you've had sufficient daylight, little fluffy side-shoots will emerge from the top third of the plant, and it’s from these that your hop cones develop. If you get pretty Elderflower type flowers, then you've got males: consider complaining.
Once ready, cut down your bines and pick the hops. Compost the bine, mulch the mound (and cover with fleece if where you live is really cold), then sit back and wait for spring.
If this is the plant’s
first year, then you’ll be blessed with about 1/3oz hops. Years
later and you’ll be measuring pounds!
Year Two:
You’ve prepared the
bed before winter, and now, after the long cold months, the hop
shoots are finally poking their white/maroon heads above the surface.
These shoots, which
will appear around March/April, are known as Bull Shoots, and
will race up your support, and won’t be far short of a ladder to
the sky. They will produce flowers, and will be very impressive to
behold. However, as a hop grower, you’re more interested with the
shoots that will follow, if you cut these down.
That’s right, you’ve
waited all winter for the first signs of life, and now you’ve got
to cut them back.
Wait a couple of weeks
for all the bull shoots to emerge, then cut them back to soil level.
In a couple of weeks more you’ll see the true hop shoots, which
will grow much slower, won’t reach as tall, but will crop much
heavier, and thanks to them not encroaching into passenger airspace,
they’ll be easier to reach when harvesting. The reason they crop
heavier is that the distance between the leaf pairings, and therefore
the distance between the potential hop tendrils, is shorter. That
way, instead of 3 or four bunches of hops per foot of plant, you get
more like 5 or six. By the way, the bunches only grow in the top
third of the plant.
These little shoots now
need something to climb. In exactly the same way as the first year,
tie fresh string to the stake, and the other end to somewhere high
up; a sunny wall, trellis, or a wigwam of poles like the commercial
growers. This can be put off for a couple of days, of course, but
once the hop is about 6 inches high it will start to droop at the
top. You shouldn’t leave it much longer than that.
Once the plant is well underway (10ft or so), take off the leaves on the lower end of the plant. This will ensure no mould can take hold. Also, inspect for red spider mite and aphids. Red Spider Mites like it dry, so give the undersides of infectd leaves a squirt with water, and squeeze the aphids between finger and thumb. Job Done.
Once the plant is well underway (10ft or so), take off the leaves on the lower end of the plant. This will ensure no mould can take hold. Also, inspect for red spider mite and aphids. Red Spider Mites like it dry, so give the undersides of infectd leaves a squirt with water, and squeeze the aphids between finger and thumb. Job Done.
Towards the end of the season you will see signs of the following:
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| First, some side shoots. |
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| Then furry bits start appearing. |
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| Then they grow. |
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| Then they start to grow. |
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| Before you know it, big ol' bunches of hops. |
First, you see some side shoots. Only the side shoots on the top third of the plant will flower.
Then, the side shoots grow little furry things. Lots of little furry things. These are the, um, modest parts of the hop plant. Waving about, waiting to be polinated.
Then, the hop cones develop from the furry bits. The little leaves grow over, and the hop looks more like something we can use.
Once the tips of the hops start to brown, around early September, then you're ready to harvest!
I've seen this question asked, (paraphrased): what are the brown things hanging off the hop cones?
These are withered up burrs, the pollen receptors.
Rhizome Cuttings:
The traditional way of
cultivating hops is by rhizome cuttings. After the third year, when
the plant is well established, the rhizome, or root system, is quite
spread out, and can be trimmed. By trimming a six-inch piece with a bud in
autumn and burying it in a mound of good compost, you can reasonably
expect hop shoots to emerge in spring. Voila, a second hop plant.
By Seed:
In order to cultivate
hop seedlings, you will require a male hop plant. This will cause you
all sorts of problems.
All mail order hop
plants are rhizomes from female hops, as these are the plants that
will produce the hop cones. If you find a male plant and introduce it
to your female (over a drink of hoppy beer, perhaps), you may get one
to pollinate the other (traditionally the male pollinates the female
plant), and then plant the seeds. However, you will not get a thoroughbred hop seedling, no matter how hard you try, as hops are dioecious.
Because of this, the natural diversity of genes and because anything else would be too easy! Hertfordshire University (amongst others) will produce thousands of trial hop breeds per year before releasing only one into mainstream use.
If you're tempted though, or think you're the next Amos Golding, proceur hop seeds, refrigerate them for about 6 weeks, then plant out into well draining compost, in the warm, and see what happens.
Softwood Cuttings:
This year, with most of the excess shoots, I used rooting hormone and tried cultivation from softwood cuttings. This is done by taking a hop shoot which is surplus to requirement, and cutting at the base. Then, place the cut (lower) end into water for an hour or so. Then, remove, dip into rooting hormone, and into AT LEAST potting compost with some sand. You can get fancy cutting compost, but I didn't.
Place some sort of cover over the cutting (5" black pots fit either a 2litre bottle or a Yeo Valley yoghurt pot nicely over it), keep moist, and out of strong sunlight. If your shoot is a couple of inches long when you trim, you can cut between the nodes, and the sideshoots will develop.
This is all new to me, will publish proper results later in the year, but so far I have a 50% success rate. If Oregon develops a bizarre Nugget dearth, then come to me.
If you're tempted though, or think you're the next Amos Golding, proceur hop seeds, refrigerate them for about 6 weeks, then plant out into well draining compost, in the warm, and see what happens.
Softwood Cuttings:
This year, with most of the excess shoots, I used rooting hormone and tried cultivation from softwood cuttings. This is done by taking a hop shoot which is surplus to requirement, and cutting at the base. Then, place the cut (lower) end into water for an hour or so. Then, remove, dip into rooting hormone, and into AT LEAST potting compost with some sand. You can get fancy cutting compost, but I didn't.
Place some sort of cover over the cutting (5" black pots fit either a 2litre bottle or a Yeo Valley yoghurt pot nicely over it), keep moist, and out of strong sunlight. If your shoot is a couple of inches long when you trim, you can cut between the nodes, and the sideshoots will develop.
This is all new to me, will publish proper results later in the year, but so far I have a 50% success rate. If Oregon develops a bizarre Nugget dearth, then come to me.
