Growing Hops 2021

@rocdoc1
Get that so8l tested, compost does not cure all soil problems.

 

Cascades are coming back to life so I'll need a few weeks to know.

 

How did they die? Like what did it look like? In my experience these plants are absolute nitrogen hogs. One year I was growing some in some crummy potting soil and right about mid summer they just kind of turned yellower and stopped really growing and a bunch of them died. The next year I made sure to feed the survivors a hearty nitrogen rich diet and they did wonderfully

 

We live on a ridge of solid granite with patches of sand derived from that granite-except under the ubiquitous oak trees there is zero organic matter in our dirt. So I basically built soil for an extension to my garden. I collected many buckets of cow patties from our property(free range, somebody else's cows) and put down a layer of slightly composted manure. I dug a lot of dirt from under some of the oak trees and put a foot deep layer mixed with some compost. Hopefully over the years the manure will rot under the soil. Periodically I will spread a little blood meal and bone meal on the surface.
The plants that died all grew to be a couple of feet tall, then slowly turned brown and withered.

 

The 'main' bines of my Cascades are about 12' - 14' long. Along the main bines, and about 12” apart, are opposing stems with leaves. Coming from the joint where the leaf stems meet the main bine are two opposing newer growth stems. They're only at lower levels and look like mini-versions of the main bine, leaves and all, kind of like secondary bines. Some of them are 18" long.
Are those secondary/mini-bines prone to produce flowers under good conditions? Or should they be removed?

I can post a pic later if that will help.

 

Yes they will as long as the usual growing requirements are met.
One year I had incredible side shoots till a big thunderstorm rolled thru with big winds which snapped off most of those side arms.
Hope the wind stay away from your hop yard.

 

Thanks. I'm thinking about training them back toward the line. Might help in a stiff wind.
Good idea?

 

Lower side arms are iffy in my experience. They tend to get mildewy quick here in the northeast... They will act as normalish bines and in the right conditions grow up stings and become new bines if low enough. I typically trim all mine bines up to about 3 feet off the ground. I have been working on this these last few days. Anything over that, I let grow and have had some loaded side arms in the past.

 

I trimmed to about 4' and the sidearms/shoots start about 3'. Good to know they're not incapable of producing.....hope mine get loaded.

 

All bines up to the cable which is around 14 ft, except Columbus which for me is always slow.
Bug pressure is very light this year as is any fungus problems.
Good rains have really been on schedule.
Now it's keeping the weeds down and watching.

 

I'm in roughly the same boat. Most of mine are 10' tall, except columbus. Maybe mine are slow too, but feel they were doing better in past years. I have been keeping up on the mildew side of things, and plan to do some bug prevention this weekend.

 

chinook is a ridiculously vigorous variety. those things are insane. that's the only variety where i am that's reached the top wire already. 20' of growth before the solstice. nuts.

it's shock. give it time, and seaweed if you have any liquid fert with kelp.

depends where you're at and what your biggest issue is, powdery or downy mildew. if you're in a humid area downy's gonna be the biggest issue in which case copper is great for over-the-counter. if your water pH is low then you should safen it with a bit of lime. if you're somewhere that's dry (like yakima) the powdery mildew is the bigger concern in which case sulfur is a good over-the-counter spray.

i usually deal with pretty gnarly restricted stuff that regular folks can't just go buy, but if you let me know what your main fungal concern is i can try and find something that doesn't require a license and that you can just order online. copper and sulfur based fungicides you can usually find in any garden supply store, or the garden section of a big box home improvement store. they're required to list the active ingredient on the front of the label.

 

I like where your head is at but here's a few tips:

~Hops grow fine in poor soils, but not with organic fertilizer like blood or bone meal. That stuff is reliant on soil microbes to break it down, and there's basically none in sand or gravel. If you're open to using water soluble fertilizers, you can have great success growing hops in sand. It's basically hydroponic growing which is both great and terrible.
~Bloodmeal is super salty and if significant amounts were touching the stem, it could be the culprit. Salts will fry herbaceous tissue real quick, and if it gets fried at the base, the whole bine is caput.
~If you want to go the organic route (which is cool and good as hell) consider supplementing the bloodmeal, compost, and manure with foliar fish emulsion, and your dry organic fertilizers with greensand. As @unlikelyspiderperson said hops are ridiculous N hogs, but toward flowering and cone maturation they're just as much hogs for K. And none of that matters if your micronutrients aren't in balance, kind of like how your mash temperature doesn't matter for attenuation if your yeast is weak or low pitch. It's all gotta be right to get production. There's a barrel analogy in plant nutrition.. you can fill a barrel but water but it will never fill higher than the lowest stave. I been seeing sap tests in hops this week where there's too much N and they're stalling out because there's not enough zinc or Mn, and the plant simply can't use the N. Sitting on a pile of nails without a hammer. And when nitrate N gets too high, the tissue gets soft and mildew gets in and they can snap in wind and such.

Getting a little into the weeds here but I love plants and I love hops. Sorry to ramble

 

I have a private applicator license

 

And am also interested in over the counter fungicides as well for the usual mildews /molds

 

This is what I use. I try to be preventative with it over reactive and it does a good job. I just use a hand sprayer so it is not perfect.

https://www.amazon.com/Bonide-811-C...&keywords=bonide+copper&qid=1623503395&sr=8-1

 

My hallertauer mittelfruh is up to 6ft high, then across at an angle another 12ft and my centennial is up 6 and 6 across. No greenfly yet, which murdered my plants last year.

Next door allotment owner is pulling up shoots from the HM about twenty foot away from where I am growing it. Thankfully I don't like him, so feel no remorse

 

Invest in a rifle

 

And a good scope
Always a crowd pleaser when you can serve home brew and venison steaks to the masses

 

It's interesting. My spalter always come up last in the spring. But they always max out first on my trellis. That's said, they are currently hanging a good five feet over my wire at 15' and the rest of my hops (northern brewery, glacier and cascade) are either just there, or two to three feet below it.