Hi everyone, I have a small hops yard that I've been filling up for the past 3 years, I have about 18 varieties of hops and am looking to expand the yard to 4-5 times what it is now over the next year to hopefully produce enough to sell to local homebrewers and/or microbreweries.
I have a Northern Brewer hill that I put in this spring and am pretty sure the hops bine is hermaphrodite-- the bine has cones on it and also "male looking" ball things as well-- you can google "hermaphrodite marijuana" to see a picture of, hops hermies look almost exactly like pot hermies.
I'm wondering what to do with this plant. I've read that they will sometime hermie out if they're stressed. It's been a hot summer here and I'm still building my irrigation system so I know the plants are water stressed. I also picked some hops the other day and found tiny black specks falling out of the cones that look about like poppy seeds-- are these hops seeds in my cones? Can I still brew with these hops or will these seeds (if that's what they are) be a problem?
Any thoughts around this plant would be appreciated. It's only a year old so if it needs to be yanked, I can just order more rhizomes this winter and replant next spring. Thanks for your time and help everyone.
