Every other Thursday, Brewed for Thought and BetterBeerBlog are teaming up for a piece called Hopinions. We will alternate who picks the topic and trade emails on the subject, two apiece. This week it’s my turn and I chose to talk about my failing hop crop.
My sad little bine
From Mario at Brewed For Thought:
I was all excited when I planted my hops. I knew they were a little late in the season, but I was confident I could get them in the ground and get that first zero harvest year out of the way. When we got back from Boonville I was ecstatic to see the little guys had popped through and I was on my way to growing my very own hops.
Then reality set in. Shortly after sprouting a few leaves, the first shoot turned grey and died. The second rhizome was still alive, but stands about an inch tall today.
I’ve seen other people’s hops growing well. Even when I visit Hopmonk today, their hop plants are growing like crazy, one bine even reaching the roof of the wall it is growing along.
What am I doing wrong? How often should I water my plants? Am I smothering them with love? I need answers!
From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog:
I’m not exactly blessed with a green thumb. My successes with hops comes from a combination of luck and a minimal amount of interference. It’s my understanding that hops require a good amount of water and should be planted in soil with good drainage.
When Sammy and I first got our hops, I put the rhizomes in a piece of tupperware. I filled it up with enough water to cover about half of the rhizomes. As soon as the shoots got some green at the end, we potted them, about 2″ into the ground. The first year we got some bines that were about 3′-4′ long, if that. The second year, Sammy accidentally threw away one of our hops. The surviving Cascade started off originally in a pot but as soon as the bines were about 2′-3′ long, we put it into the ground and it really took off. This year, it’s insane the amount of growth I’m getting, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a second harvest from that Cascade. It already has burrs.
The more successful hop bine growing in front at Hopmonk
I picked up 4 rhizomes this year from my homebrew shop; two I kept for myself and two I gave to my brother-in-law. I don’t quite remember what I gave him but we have another Cascade and a new Centennial. We potted these new rhizomes as well. We added some rocks at the bottom of the planters to aid in drainage and then topped them off with soil from our backyard that we mixed with mushroom compost. I watered them daily, enough to keep the soil moist and kept both pots in full sun. Both plants have bines that are are about 2′-3′ long now and I’m hoping they double in size. I’m not expecting any cones from these but it’s good to see them growing. The last time I was at my brother-in-law’s house, his hops were also doing well.
It’s a fine line, you just gotta keep an eye on them.
From Mario at Brewed For Thought:
Well I’m glad you’ve had your success, but you to answer the question I’m most interested in. How often do you water, and how much?
Also, do you have any suggestions for fertilizer or other special treatment for your hops?
I have a copy of The Homebrewer’s Garden as well as the pamphlet provided by Freshops when I bought the rhizomes. Beyond that my resouces are limited and it would be great to hear what methods someone has used that hasn’t published a book or sold hops for a living.
My idea is to grow my hops, but also give some tips for those who might be looking to grow their own as well.
From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog:
We don’t do anything really special with regards to our hops. We water enough to keep the soil moist, not muddy. In temperate weather like we’ve been having that means I water my hops every other day in the evening. Maybe every two days. Of course during warmer/hotter weather, I water more frequently, just not necessarily more, if that makes any sense.
Expanding upon the water issue more, hops generally like a lot of water but you can’t overwater them, if you do, you’d better hope you have adequate drainage. I had a pair of rhizomes that never took, despite having shoots when I purchased them. I had them in pots, full sun, lots of water. What I think ended up happening was I overwatered the rhizomes and they just broke down in the soil, they began to decompose. I dug them up a couple weeks later and they were just a fraction of their original size.
The soil around my house is in pretty good shape. It breaks apart easily and is dark in color, not at all clay-like. We don’t have to add too many things to amend it but we do add mushroom compost to help things out. Sammy saw this program on the tele where this woman in Santa Cruz amends her soil with fish heads (nitrogen, I think) and egg shells (calcium) to grow her tomato plants. Since then, we’ve been adding egg shells into the soil. We dig the hole, put in the egg shells, a little bit of soil, then the plant. Not sure if I’m seeing a whole lot of difference but I get the science behind it.
At the end of the day, I don’t treat my hops any more differently than I do any other plant. I look in on them on a daily basis to see how healthy they look (based upon how the leaves look) and I water accordingly. What I’ve found with regards to gardening in general is that you just need to let nature do her thing. We’ve had some plants we’ve been overly attentive with and they’ve died on us. We have other plants that we’ve written off as dead only to find them resurrected weeks later.
How often are you watering? Consider amending your soil with Miracle Grow or whatever they have in the garden aisle. How deep did you plant your rhizomes? Does the soil you planted them in have adequate drainage? Things to consider.
I just happened across your blog, so I hope I’m not too late to help. I have 24 plants, most of which are thriving. I don’t know if “Dr. Greenthumb” is a member of my Yahoo ‘Grow-Hops’ group, but I’m pretty sure that the professors who taught him are. ;-) Our current membership of 3,046 members includes many commercial growers, as well as home-growers who have grown hops for many years. If you can’t get nearly immediately responses to urgent questions that you post on our forum, we have a searchable archive of 9,054 messages. We have hundreds of links to excellent hop-growing articles, files, photos, etc. If you join and don’t want the heavy email traffic, you have the option of receiving a single daily digest or to not receive any emails at all. To join us, please visit my website for more info.
Now, before commenting upon your question about watering, my first reaction is a question about the picture of your hops; you appear to have mulched with wood chips, or perhaps bedding material for hamsters and such. Is that redwood? … cedar? … or perhaps pine that has just been dyed? The reason I ask is that I’m wondering if it has affected the pH of your soil. I don’t know how long it would take to do that, if ever, but it strikes me as a possibility. One of the recent posts in our group discusses how to test your own soil pH, which you can do with a regular brewing pH meter, and I _suppose_ that you ought to also be able to use pH paper that you can get from a brew shop. Or you could submit a soil sample to your county cooperative extension office. I will also comment that wood, as it decomposes, draws nitrogen out of your soil — although the hops in your picture do not show any signs of nitrogen deficiency; I do not recommend using wood-chips as mulch, but using well-rotted compost instead. The ‘fabric’ that is made for use as a weed barrier is also good, although you probably already have that underneath your wood chips.
It does not look — in the picture — like you have formed a mound for your rhizome. This is _recommended_ although probably not absolutely necessary, considering that no one builds mounds for wild hops. The purpose of the mound is to facilitate draining after watering, which will happen in the wild without mounds so long as it is the right type of soil on enough of a slope to naturally provide the same effect for typical rainfall. Without mounds or those conditions, it is possible that your rhizomes are rotting from too much moisture.
It is also possible that the variety of hops you’ve selected will not grow well in your particular area. For instance, my Fuggles and Cascade do very well here in Arkansas and are huge and loaded with cones; my Centennial do marginally okay; my Magnums struggle — and I’ve had one die — and I will probably replace them with something else next year. All varieties grow under the exact same conditions, but obviously the Magnums don’t like it in Arkansas.
Now for the watering; until the past couple of days, we have been having a drought in my area. Temperatures usually in the mid to high 90′s, sometimes over 100 degrees, practically no rain for close to a month — and substantially less than normal since early spring. I water twice per week, but with good long, _DEEP_ waterings, and of course all of my plants are in mounds. That has worked well for me. Some growers use drip irrigation; I have wanted to do that, but have never found the time or money. I also apply some Miracle Grow every couple of weeks; be careful to not over do it with fertilizer because too much nitrogen will cause a lot of leaf growth but reduce your yield of cones.
I hope that helps a little.
Cheers.
Bill Velek
Thanks Bill. I appreciate the information and still have some crappy little vines. I’ve given up on them this year but will try again next year. My guess is too much clay, not enough drainage and the mulch may be a culprit as well. If I add enough sand to create mounds, I will try the Cascades again, as the general consensus is that Cascades love it here in Sonoma County, especially since your weather conditions seem to mimic our regular conditions.
Although some people do add sand, I’ve always questionned the wisdom of that — although it is the cheaper alternative unless you have good topsoil that you can take from somewhere else on your property. Sand should help improve the drainage a bit, and perhaps the friability of the soil as well, but good organic material will accomplish the same thing while also building your soil. If you have reasonably good soil formed into a mound high enough so that the rhizome is planted at a level which is higher than ground around your mound, the water should drain out the sides of the mound enough that you will be okay without any sand. I know that people equate it with “sandy loam” soil, but I still don’t buy it; sandy loam is great, but it is what nature has given us in those areas, and we aren’t going to remove the sand to replace it with something better. In a home garden where you are going to add to your soil, I would recommend adding well-rotted compost and manure instead of sand; I recommend bagged manure from garden centers instead of nature manure or else you’ll probably be introducing all sorts of wild weeds. Because I missed the planting window and couldn’t get rhizomes when I first decided to plant, I had nearly a year to continue to prepare my first row. I repeatedly tilled it, adding compost, manure, and even sawdust and nitrogen (the nitrogen is absolutely essential if adding sawdust because it is needed to help it decompose). So by the time the next year rolled around and I could actually get the rhizomes, I had an excellent bed to plant them in. If you are giving up on them anyway, I’d recommend that you get a soil analysis done now (our county extension office does them for us free in Arkansas), and then use the next 8 or 9 months to build the soil and kill off any sod. Of course, you have just two plants whereas I made a row for a dozen plants. Incidentally, if your soil analysis indicates that you need lime, add it NOW because it will take until next year to ‘sweeten’ your soil. If you’re going to add sawdust, too, I’d recommend that you keep the sawdust in a separate compost pile where you will add nitrogen and also mix in some leaves and grass clippings, etc. That’s because you shouldn’t mix lime and nitrogen at the same time because, as I understand it, they tend to neutralize one another; so you can lime your soil, make excellent compost, and then add the compost to the soil and till it together real well in the weeks before your plant your rhizomes.
Cheers.
Bill Velek