New member intro looking into farming hops

[wide eyed and legless]

Look up, 'Layering' a 100% sure way to get new plants from existing bines and easy to do.

 

[djorr5]

From a quick search I found an old article from 1948 about layering, "Experiments on the Layering of Hops I. The Establishment of A Permanent Layer Bed". I will have a better look tomorrow but couldn't find much more than that. Do you have a specific page to look at? @wide eyed and legless

 

[An Ankoù]

Here's where you need to look:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=propagating+hops+by+layering&t=ffab&ia=webDon't bother with gardening knowhow.com as they seem to be in a bunker somewhere.

 

[djorr5]

Hmm. thinking about the 'layering' approach I had a couple of thoughts..... that may be wrong. If I went with cuttings then I am normally meant to do that early spring anyway (i.e. cut back). Then use these cuttings for propagation. However with layering, from what I understand, I need to keep the bines connected which goes against what I have read about cutting back early spring and training 2 or 3 bines per string and trim back the rest.

 

[Grmblz]

You are correct in your thinking, however there seems to be an assumption that you will get a crop on your first year, you may well get a few cones but the first year is all about establishing the plants.
It may not be best practice but I just let mine go, on the first year, don't bother with training just let the bines wander along the ground, you could then just put piles of soil along the bines at intervals to generate roots.
The alternative is to take cuttings once the bines have reached a suitable length, worth remembering is hops very close cousin, where "cloning" is a standard practice and very easy to do, just remember the rooting hormone required is for "softwood" cuttings, or just use honey.
Layering requires more space, not a problem if you are after just a few plants, but for mass production I would favour cuttings.
Another consideration is that like their relatives hops are a short day plant, so if you can provide supplemental lighting to give them about 14hrs light they will grow very quickly.

 

[duncbrewer]

Cuttings rooted in a week when I snipped them off my hop plant.

 

[djorr5]

Cuttings rooted in a week when I snipped them off my hop plant.

Just chuck em into soil or water or do you do the full blow cutting mix and rooting stuff?

Also did you collect the cuttings in spring our autumn?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Hmm. thinking about the 'layering' approach I had a couple of thoughts..... that may be wrong. If I went with cuttings then I am normally meant to do that early spring anyway (i.e. cut back). Then use these cuttings for propagation. However with layering, from what I understand, I need to keep the bines connected which goes against what I have read about cutting back early spring and training 2 or 3 bines per string and trim back the rest.

If you layer the rest instead of trimming them, they will take root where the buds were. If you have never cloned anything by cuttings then layering is a simple solution. Once the bud has thrown out a root system in layering then trim and plant the root.
It is by far the easiest for the inexperienced who hasn't cloned anything.

 

[duncbrewer]

I just snipped off the ones I did'nt want to train and stood them in a glass of water straight out of the tap on the window ledge. Never seen anything take root so quickly. I let them establish a decent load of roots then potted them into soil and kept them really wet / floating for the first week or so and then " drained " them down to daily watering after a week or so.
Wish I'd done it with the Tangerine dream as well as the EKG.