2009 Hop Plantations

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I cut 3 buds off this morning and allowing 2 to grow - not sure if this is the right thing to do but dont want to overstress the little bundle of goodness.

:icon_offtopic: PS: Sorry for the bad quality pics - all taken on my phone which has the worst camera ever!!
 
Took the mulch off my hops in both pots and in the garden, all are starting to shoot with the Cluster winning so far. Will need that trellis within a week or so I reckon!
 
Spotted a 2nd shoot yesterday, first one has found it's little climbing wire. Just gotta keep an eye on it cause i'm trying to grow it horizontally
 
I still have no action on my chinook and it has been at least 3 weeks. Should I be removing the mulch and replacing it once it is on its way?
 
I grew my chinook horizontally after about 2.5m high last year, it's instincts are to keep going up but it started learning and a quick reminder helped it out every now and then.

About the mulch, I just removed all mine even though we're still going to have some cold mornings. My chinook has just poked its heads out and I mean only just.
The POR on the other hand is going nuts, had to put my wire up on the weekend so it can grow across the yard as its almost at the top of the stake I put up.
 
Finally starting to see some action on my plants.

cascade was first out of the blocks but stalled. Now its sending up decent shoots. The Cluster is starting to make a concerted effort to catch up followed by the fuggles. But the Columbus and Chinook haven't decided to make any real effort...yet. It won't be long though there are early signs of some good growth. I'll try and get photos up.
 
Patience O'Henry....they all have different shooting times and tend to sprout green leaves then stop for a few weeks while they send the nutrition from the sun into producing a good root system, especially in the first year.

Leave the mulch on the chinook as they are generally slow off the blocks and will make there way through the mulch layer (assuming it is only an inch or two thick).

Stop looking at them for a fortnight and you should see results. The more you prod and poke them the more chance of damaging the tender first shoots.

Dont overwater or overfertilise them. They are weeds and are extremely hardy. They hate being mollycoddled!
 
The more you prod and poke them the more chance of damaging the tender first shoots.

+1. While I was removing some mulch I broke a very small shoot off of one of my plants.

Patience indeed is a virtue.
 
Three of my five varieties are kicking in.

The Chinook which did well last year is coming through nicely.
Hop_Plantation_2010_001_Chinook__Large_.jpg

The Perle is looking pretty good too.
Hop_Plantation_2010_002_Pearle__Large_.jpg

The Columbus is the one going gangbusters.
Hop_Plantation_2010_003_Columbus__Large_.jpg

The Hersbrucker and Tettnanger are just starting to poke through, although they don't get as much sun.

Doc
 
If you have a lot of pine/spruce trees then it's possible that your soil is too acidic, as you mentioned. Have you added lime to the soil to raise the pH? I've added some lime to the soil in my front yard because I have a huge blue spruce tree in the front and it's slowly killing the grass under it. The two hops I have planted there have done well so far.

You can also try digging cattle or horse manure into your soil. One last thing, I read somewhere that if the soil is lacking calcium that that can interfere with nutrient absorption by the hop. I actually watered my hops with watered down expired milk. One of them wasn't doing that well - very pale green leaves on the new growth and pale veiny patterns on the older leaves. Within a week of using the milk the plant had very deep green leaves everywhere.

Thanks newguy.

Yes, there are lots of spruce trees, few pines and junipers, but also many birch and few maple and basswoods (lime-tree?) (Oak and many others). But I use some leafy tree ash when I plant and later I use pinch of lime too. I put also handfull of chicken manure each hole.

I think it helps little bit now, I give "autumn PK fertilizer" (straight traslate of finnish "syksyn PK lannoite" =) ) So it could be that lacking calcium problem. Now cones grow littlebit faster and maybe I can collect them soon.

What you think. Next spring, could I need dig up my hop plants and make bigger example 50cm diam. round hole and 50cm deep (it was 20 x 20 before). First put horse manure to hole and fill it whit new soil (I can buy from shop or use my own compost) and plant my hops again?
 
Three of my five varieties are kicking in.

The Chinook which did well last year is coming through nicely.
View attachment 31186

The Perle is looking pretty good too.
View attachment 31187

The Columbus is the one going gangbusters.
View attachment 31188

The Hersbrucker and Tettnanger are just starting to poke through, although they don't get as much sun.

Doc

Doc - Looks like your in for a good crop this year.

Something I did seemed to spur them on a little: I gave them all a teaspoon of fish emulsion diluted in 5 litres of water and the Cascade decided it was time to come up, also the Hallertau has doubled in size almost overnight!! :excl:
 
Doc - Looks like your in for a good crop this year.

Something I did seemed to spur them on a little: I gave them all a teaspoon of fish emulsion diluted in 5 litres of water and the Cascade decided it was time to come up, also the Hallertau has doubled in size almost overnight!! :excl:

A spot of gardening yesterday arvo, opened up the other two varieties to some more light.
They also all got a dose of Nitrosol on Sunday growth should start to kick in when we get some more sunlight.

Doc
 
Are hops easy enough to grow guys?
been looking on ebay to grab a couple?
 
Are hops easy enough to grow guys?
been looking on ebay to grab a couple?


Well mine's growing and I manage to kill almost everything I grow. Funny, the only thing's I've ever been good at growing is veggies and weeds <_< and even sometimes my veggies don't do what they're supposed to
 
Well mine's growing and I manage to kill almost everything I grow. Funny, the only thing's I've ever been good at growing is veggies and weeds <_< and even sometimes my veggies don't do what they're supposed to

Lucky for you hops are weeds so you should be fine :p

Seriously.

Like bulbs, rhizomes have a store of energy so they don't need constant attention. Apart from some occasional watering, a feed once or twice during the growing season i don't give these plants much attention.

During the height of summer when the mercury hits high 30s, low 40s then you need to water daily but apart from that the best advice is....

RDWHAHB

If you can kill a hop plant you should give up gardening full stop. Stick to plastic indoor plants. :lol:
 
hey hey

I'm a bit confused after reading over a few threads on how hops are planted. I planted my hops at the start of the month with the white shoot looking things facing down, after realised this was the wrong way I've just pulled them out and planning on turning them around so the shoots face up like they are supose to. My question is a bit silly but I'm unsure and can't find an answer anywhere but here it goes

Do you plant the entire rhimzone under the ground or do you have some of it above ground so there is a stick looking thing poking out?

Just after looking at all your fantastic pictures I'm a bit confused cause mine looks like a stick in the ground.

dicko
 
Do you plant the entire rhimzone under the ground or do you have some of it above ground so there is a stick looking thing poking out?

dicko

G'day Dicko,

The usual practice is to plant them horizontally, with the bud ends about 2-3cm from the top and the root ends about 3-4cm.

HopsWest on ebay give you a really good set of instructions - you can see the planting side of these instructions in pics here.

EDIT: You could allow the buds to stick out of the soil so long as you plant the "rhizome proper" in this way.

Cheers,
Rod.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top