Hops Are Harvested

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scrogster

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My first season POR hops are now safely picked, dried and frozen: all 24g of them, maybe I'll do better next year. The vine still looks nice and leafy, What is the best way to proceed with it? Should I cut it down now, or wait until it dies back? I've also read somewhere that you can make new rhizomes by burying pieces of the vine. Is this correct? What have other folks done, and what have the results been like? :D
 
From what I have read the most beneficial thing is to let the vine continue to grow until it dies back naturally, thus putting more stored energy into the rhizomes for a good start to the next growing season.
Having said that, a lot of hop farms just cut off when harvesting for ease, and because they only require a limited number of bines to be generated from each rhizome for the new growing season (the remainder are pruned) so if you have a really healthy / developed plant the extra time is of less use, if you have a new / developing plant I would leave it.

If you cut off, you can grow plants from the cuttings if you wish... which is covered in thread "Hop Plantation 2005"
 
If you don't have to cut it down then don't. Two options:

1. Let it keep growing until the cold/frost deals with it. This will enable the plant to photosynthesise for longer and send more carbohydrate to the rhizome/roots giving the plant a better start next year. i.e. more stored energy to improve hop vigour in the next season.

2. Lightly bury the vines and produce more rhizomes to start more plants next season, if you want more plants. More vines growing independantly in the same location could lead to competition for water, nutrients etc. But if you want to grow more vines and have more room then this method is useful for propagation. You can pull the vine down carefully to avoid damage and bury most of the vine in pots with potting mix and produce new rhizomes that way.
 

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