2016 Hop Plantations, Show Us Your Hop Garden!

[kunfaced]

A friend I met at the beer spectapular. I have to go out regional vic to get it though, and don't know if I have the time to pick it up before it's too big.

 

[LiquidGold]

Here's the slow progression of my hops this year, seems to be a repeat of last year.

Popped it's head up (10/8/15)


Bit of growth (3/9/15)


Getting there (8/10/15)


At least in those two months I finally found the time to renew the bamboo tipis, string or more bamboo risers still to go up.



I'm thinking not enough water? I turned the drippers on when i first saw shoots but I've been a bit slack about keeping the barrel always topped up.
I gave them all a good drenching with some diluted fish waste from the aquaponics which I hope will give them the boost they need.

 

[GrumpyPaul]

Unknown hop plant, allegedly a German variety according to the man selling it at the market.

And Super aroma courtesy mofox

 

[Bruer]

It's interesting, one of my POR plants is going absolutely mental (about an inch per day). The other POR and the two cascades less so. This is their first year, but I got the rhizomes from Hippy and they were pretty well established. At the moment I'm just waiting for them to go crazy too, but I'm not sure what's really happening. They're all in large 30 L pots with premium potting mix and additional soil wetter crystals. They're also all in full sun and getting heaps of water.

Can I expect them to go mental soon too? I'm in Perth and we're facing about a week of very warm weather.

Any seasoned hop growers care to lend their opinion?

 

[AJ80]

Mt Hood (thanks Mardoo!) has gone nuts, the main bine has put on a foot since Sunday and I've got new bines poking up all over the place. One tiny little shoot off the Goldings, the one shoot I had on the Chinook grew to about 1cm before dying and still nothing from the Cascade...at least one has gone crazy!

 

[user 35653]

South East Gippsland. Cascade second year. Currently growing at 15cm a day. String over SS wire, spawn 5m up.

 

[Nizmoose]

No idea how people are getting the insane growth that they are but here are my three new plants (photo as attachment?) they've already beaten my last year's cascade growth for the entire year. Only my second year of growing hops and last year I got not a single cone, things are looking more promising this year. One question I have is do I need to cut away some bines as some people seem to do? I'm not sure if I can bring myself to do it. And if I did I'd want it to be big enough to throw in a pot to see what happens.

 

[Spohaw]

Had a go at cloning some hops just to see how they go

I'll take some more soon and try them under fluros in a humidity crib just to see which method works better

Read that people have better luck taking semi ripe cuttings from laterals later on in the season so I'll give that a go as well

Only got one cascade growing a decent amount each day , they all sort of went off the grow for a couple weeks

Cascade clones

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I tried that a couple of years ago, but found the quickest way for them to get a strong root system going was to lay the bines down an bury them in another pot, better than just cutting off excess bines and binning them.

 

[mofox1]

Read that people have better luck taking semi ripe cuttings from laterals later on in the season so I'll give that a go as well

Another easy method is to cut away the late bines to pop up, and make sure you get a bit of root material on them. Re-pot straight away.

I did two of these last year, and while they did not grow much after being potted, they still established a good root system (had to cut away half a meter of roots coming out of the bottom of the pots!). First of my plants to start growing this year... although possibly just because the pots warmed quicker than the ones in the ground.

Time will tell how good they go, I gave one away to GrumpyPaul and the other to Symphony1974(?).

 

[mofox1]

I tried that a couple of years ago, but found the quickest way for them to get a strong root system going was to lay the bines down an bury them in another pot, better than just cutting off excess bines and binning them.

Lol. That sounds even easier.

 

[Spohaw]

I'll try air layering as well ( which is what wide said ) ... Might just try and do it with some plastic bag full of moist coco taped around a small cut , I'll jam a bit of match in the cut to keep it slightly open and see how it compares ... How quick did yours root wide ???

I've got a couple hops here that I'll chop up like you recommended too mofox , don't see the harm in trying ... Thy are only in small pots and need to be transplanted any way

Cheers

 

[Bruer]

So my notion of "mental" a week ago is now totally different. I've got one POR growing at half a foot per day. The other POR and the two cascades are still slow to take off, but they had much smaller 'zomes.

What fertilisers are people using? I'm growing in pots and gave them all a feed of seasol the other day. Any other recommendations?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I did mine in the hydroponic set up I experimented with, the main vines went out of the top of the green house where they were greeted by the local possums, if I remember right I had decent roots forming within 4 weeks.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

So my notion of "mental" a week ago is now totally different. I've got one POR growing at half a foot per day. The other POR and the two cascades are still slow to take off, but they had much smaller 'zomes.

What fertilisers are people using? I'm growing in pots and gave them all a feed of seasol the other day. Any other recommendations?

Seasol is fine, it REALLY does work for establishing a root system and keeping the plant healthy until they really start to take off, when the buds start to form that's when to use the fertilizer, to much fertilizer at the start of the growth will impair them and make them sickly. Yates's Dynamic Lifter is a good fertilizer.

 

[Bruer]

Seasol is fine, it REALLY does work for establishing a root system and keeping the plant healthy until they really start to take off, when the buds start to form that's when to use the fertilizer, to much fertilizer at the start of the growth will impair them and make them sickly. Yates's Dynamic Lifter is a good fertilizer.

Great! They're in a really good quality potting mix and have only been there for a few weeks. Is it still worth giving them a feed with Dynamic Lifter or should there be enough nutrients in the potting mix for a while?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

What I do is keep my plants a bit hungry until you notice them really starting to go, the Seasol every couple of weeks is fine until then, there is no NPK in Seasol or very little and it will help your plants take up the nutrient from the potting mix.

 

[Nizmoose]

I tried that a couple of years ago, but found the quickest way for them to get a strong root system going was to lay the bines down an bury them in another pot, better than just cutting off excess bines and binning them.

So by this you mean literally cut the bine, put a bit of dirt in a new pot chuck in the bine horizontally, then cover with dirt? How long would you let a bine get before cutting it with the aim of giving it new life in a new pot?

 

[Spohaw]

So by this you mean literally cut the bine, put a bit of dirt in a new pot chuck in the bine horizontally, then cover with dirt? How long would you let a bine get before cutting it with the aim of giving it new life in a new pot?

He wouldn't cut it off the main rhizome but just bury a bit of the bine in the dirt and roots should grow where it's been buried then once it's established a decent amount of new roots where it's been buried you cut it off the main plant

Was thinking you would just wait until it's finished flowering then cut the bine back to a few sets of leaves and then cut It off the main rhizome

Or just do it to a lateral so it isn't to big for the new root system to handle

I was thinking of doing a few different bags with coir up a bine every few sets of leaves and when it's finished flowering I can cut underneath each set of new roots and have a few new plants per bine

All theory ATM but

 

[wide eyed and legless]

If as we see in these posts growers are cutting off the excess bines, instead of cutting them off bend them and either peg them in to the ground where leaves have sprouted, those leaves will then turn into roots, like with spuds, you build up the soil covering the leaves and those leaves will turn into roots which will bear more spuds.
If everybody did this with their bines there would be heaps of rhizomes to be had next year and its easy to do, Spohaw's method of the cuttings is a bit more complicated using hormone powder or rooting gel but that is how the commercial growers multiply their stocks.