Woooooohooooooooo!

I went out to my gardens yesterday evening and guess what I saw? That’s right! I see the very beginings of growth! Oh yeah! The hops are rising from the earth. Awakening from their sleep!

Funny you mention that because I just happened to look today and saw the very same thing! Hope this warmer weather lasts. Been a brutal winter.

Man I’m behind. Still waiting on the shipment from NB. In Maryland so because of the cold weather they just started shipping.

So, after those precious buds you’ve been waiting for all winter get to be about 12-18" long you are going to cut them right to the ground? I’ve been reading some lit on growing hops and it seems that is what is done commercially. I feel the pain, but I’m going to try it this year and see how it affects my vines/crop. My hops get over 30’ high and much of the crop is up high; and my Cascades that were in all season (2nd yr) made a million small cones, whereas a plant I had just started last year came into flowering much later in it’s first season and had big beautiful cones. So I’m just wondering if anyone else has an idea about the mutilation of baby hop vines and how it is supposed to affect the crop…

Cone size has a lot to do with the type of hops. Whether or not to crop the first chutes depends on the age of the rhizomes. I would let first and second year rhizomes grow at will. After that I would crop the first few chutes that pop up and limit the rhizome the 3 or 4 chutes.

WOW! These are growing VERY well this year. I went from just barely being able to see the first signs of life to 3 inch tall shoots in less than 2 weeks. Looking strong and healthy! I think I will just let them grow uncontrolled and see what happens. I will just try and train them along my horizontal ropes.

Training horizontally is going to be a challenge - they really want to grow upwards and I found that they wouldn’t naturally wind themselves around a horizontal string. Seems like a good idea but I couldn’t get it to work. I’ve got a fairly steep “teepee” trellis and they sometimes fail to find their way up those wires.

I planted 2 rows of rhizomes last year about 10 feet apart. Over each row, I ran a wire across t-posts about 4 feet high. Then I ran a wire between the rows and parallel to the rows about 16 feet high between taller posts. I ran twine over the wires so that the bines were trained vertically the first four feet and at a steep angle the rest of the way. It worked very well last year. I plan to increase the height of the center posts by at least another 3 feet as some of the bines grew past 16 feet last year. At some point, I’d like to increase the height of the wires over the rows as well.

My babies.
http://s1074.photobucket.com/user/in_the_basement/media/April%2026%202015%20Hops.jpg.html

What little darlings :smiley:

Looking good. I got mine in the mail, really need to plant them have them hibernating in the fridge. Kinda glad I didn’t we got freezing temps this last week. Hopefully I get over this bug that’s going around and can post them this week. Going to try container hops this year over my old clothes line and grow them horizontal. Not looking for volume just want to say I made a beer using “my hops” :mrgreen:

I had a freeze the day before I took the picture. Did not seem to hurt them. I have to say, the stems on these plants this year are WAY thicker than last year which was the year I planted them. I feel like I will get some good production from them this year. I am excited!

Speaking of the robustness of the hops in their second year… I decided to ditch a variety I’m not too fond of and dug out a 3 yr old plant (most of it). There is some serious subterranean mass in these things!

My hops are growing like CRAZY. I think I see the beginnings of the hop flowers getting ready to be born.

My hops are growing like CRAZY. I think I see the beginnings of the hop flowers getting ready to be born.

First year for me with growing hops. Within 3 weeks, I have a cascade shoot that has grown feet…not inches. It grew 6" in one day…I know because I put a small sharpie mark on the cord, and measured when I got home from work 8 hours later.

These pictures show the same shoot, just about 3 weeks apart. One pic was taken May 9th, and the other was just taken a couple of days ago. Insane how quickly this one has taken off! Maybe the statue of the naked couple has something to do with it?

My second year plants are up against a six foot fence… I had planned to train them horizontally, but my Chinook caught a branch off of the neighbor’s tree and is fifteen feet tall now. Yikes.

The only one that isn’t a beast is the Centennial… we’ll see if it catches up this season at all.