Hi
@djorr5, sorry mate that was from memory, 3 or 4 yrs ago, shit maybe even 5 and it was the going rate for a small rhizome from the sources I mentioned, typically a 6inch errr 7cm? rhizome with 3 or 4 buds on it, no crop to speak of for the first yr, a cutting will be a yr behind it in terms of product. honestly the big hop farms use cuttings, dig up a mature plant and you might get 30 or 40 rhizomes pieces, take cuttings and you can end up with hundreds of plants, sure it will take a yr for them to form a rhizome but the economic advantages are obvious, the biggest expense is going to be your infrastructure, have you considered the cost of water? Nevermind the trellises. You've got a couple of months before rhizomes become available, every yr around spring we get people asking about rhizomes, it's too late, mid winter is for rhizomes, as S.E mentioned, cuttings are a different animal, but folks want now, this summer, it just doesn't work like that. You mention 8 acres, I live on 5, I have 8 different hop varieties in a small hop garden covering maybe 1/4 acre, ok it's just for my use but the whole idea of 8 acres worth of hops!!! F me, have you ever harvested a single bine? Not trying to put you off, just thinking you might not be aware of all the challenges. Plenty of folk grow hops just to sell the rhizomes to aspiring hop growers, they don't actually use the hop flowers themselves (very sad)
Seeing as you're new to all this I'll do you a deal, pm me a pic of your proposed site/infrastructure (it could be just a trellised fence) and I'll send you a few rhizomes FOC about July/August (I need to dig up some older plants) Once you have gone through the whole process you might reconsider it as a revenue stream.
It's a bit like wheat, broad acre farming with combines killed farmhouse production, back in the day an acre of wheat hand sown and harvested fed a family for the year, today we go to the supermarket and just buy our flour/bread, commercial hop farms are industrialised to the same extent, gone are the days that a few acres managed by hand are a commercial viability, unless it's for ones own consumption, and believe me you ain't gonna get through 8 acres of hops just brewin for yourself, mainly because the window for harvest is quite short, and it's extremely labour intensive, still the offer stands.
. Just purchased about 8 acres of land around the Sale area in Victoria and am looking to utilise the land. Over a couple of beers with some mates we decided on hops. Was hoping to start off with a small trellis system and some dwarf varieties but as I do more and more research I guess I will end up with the standard stuff like Cascade etc. with maybe starting off on a small trellis system and upgrade to a larger one as some revenue starts coming in. If anyone has any experience in this field feel free to reach out to me.
