Instead of cleaning my kettles I decided to plant the hops I had received last week. Our soil is what my dad (“master gardener”) called Loamy, but what I saw sure did seem like clay. I wonder what that’ll do to the hops. It’s super fertile, though.
Anyway here’s what I did:
Post hole digger to about a foot down, put in a mix of the aerated soil and some moss that the hops had come in, up to about 7" deep.
I put each hop rhizome (spaced about 3 feet apart) on top of a bit of moss for drainage, and then covered in pre-fertilized potting soil - just sprinkled it on top, no packing etc. Then I finished up with a bit more of that soil I had dug up.
Rhizomes are down about 4" below the soil so I HOPE that’s far enough to be below the frost line.
here’s the real question, though. They were in the paper bag they were shipped in with wet moss for a week, and bines had already sprouted. The EKGs had for example about 4 bines, each about 4" long. When I planted them I tried to be as delicate as I could but I saw that one or two had bent - kinda reminded me of what happens when you bend mung bean sprouts too far. It’s not broken, but who knows. Anyway, My concern is that, because they’ve already sprouted, and there’s at least one more month before the end of frosts, my hops will die. Should I put one of those plastic anti-frost doohickies over the soil? Or should I RDWHAHB.