Homegrown Hop's '06

[Lufah]

My hops are starting to come up already. This is year 2 for them.




Question: Do I cut them back to the ground once? Last chance of frost for here is earyly may.

Question: Do I trim them back to 2-3 bines once they get going. Ralph from Hop Union says let them all grow. Everything I have ever read says to cut them down to a couple bines.

Travis

[seanhagerty]

If I were you, I would spray them with Roundup.

[Homegrown Hops]

I would leave them and fertilize them well with Bat guano. If you have trouble finding Bat guano let me know. I have 150lbs that some friends who moved to Hawaii gave me.

HH

[bub]

The hop guy said let em go... if anyone would know it would be him. If I recall correctly the reason they cut them back is for mechanization, unless you got a mechanical hop picker let the little bastards live.
BUB

[Speyedr]

It's the same old debate whether Hops, Raspberries, Tomatoes, etc.

One side thinks if you trim back the least hardy vines/shoots/suckers and let the 2 or 3 most hardy grow you will increase your yield because the plant will not waste energy on the weeker parts.

The other side believes that if you leave it alone it will yield just fine.

I know with Raspberries, which basically work the same way, you are supposed to cut all but a few shoots.

That said, if you have the space and setup to tie up all of those vines then do it. If you have more tha one plant, why not try both? It will NOT hurt the plant to cut them back or leave them, and then you can judge how you like it.

Rob

[zymurgest]

Well, fwiw, first year hops should *NOT* be cut down. You *may* cut back several of the less worthy bines the following year, allowing only 2-3 per string to wrap, but that's all you need afaik. After the third year you can start harvesting rhyzomes and propagate a new mound! YMMV, ttyal, and ilbcnu!

Prost!

Michel

[beer_bear]

I just let mine go. What's the worst that could happen? I figure for a home grower, I have nothing to lose but $3.50. They will grow no matter what. Look what mine are doing in their first year. They haven't had anything other than Miracle Grow yet. The bat gwano will be coming soon.Hope to see more results later. The set of 6 are my Cascade. The two that are going down the fence are hallertau. I hear that the hallertau don't like to grow here in Memphis, but what the hell, it's only hops.

[JB-Brewer]

Looks awesome bear, I think I'll be using that setup that hooks up to the fence. It hasn't stopped raining for the past 2 weeks here in MA, so hopefully by next weekend I'll be able to get them going. This will be my first year in trying to get some going, so we'll see how it goes.

Anyone else who has pics on their setup for growing would be grand!