Ok I hate the term Cali too. This year I am taking the leap and going to grow some hops. I have read up a decent amount but I'm wondering if anyone has more region specific tips. It looks like it'll be warm weather in San Diego from here out. Is it ok to go ahead and plant now? I used some twine I already had, but it's pretty thin so I doubled it up. Will that be strong enough? Also, we have gophers. I put two layers of chicken wire about a foot down and foot across. Will this do the trick?
Looks great to me... my hops are under 3ft of snow at the moment. You could have started a couple weeks ago in SD, but it's tough to get rhizomes that early. I saw 5-6 foot bines survive 20F nights when I lived in CO so you should have no issues. The chicken wire might be a mild PITA when you need to divide your plants in a few years.
Thanks for the advice. Our gopher problem can be insanely bad so without the chicken wire I would see the plants being pulled down in front of my eyes. I'm gonna try to go buy the rhizomes today and probably reinforce the top rope since it worries me it wont hold the weight come august.
Neighbor is in his third year of growing Cascade and Williamette hops and switched to plastic covered wire last year because the weight and the vine were weighing down and splitting the twine constantly. Less stress on a plant equals a healthier crop. Going to split some for me to grow this year if Michigan ever thaws out so excited for spring!
Kinda seems like that may happen and I wish I decided all that before I strung it up. It should be easy to switch it out though so we'll see.
I don't know if you have cutworms in your neck of the woods, but if you do you might think about adding some cut-in-half solo cups to the base of where the bines are coming up. My tettnanger took a hit, and barely recovered at the end of the growing season. Cutworms are assholes. (Not my picture)
