They will grow horizontally with no problems, although you might need to train them a bit.
To deal with the bugs, try making up a spray from some warm water, garlic and chilli. Spray liberally.
I have a few that grow along a fence and they produce as well as the vertical ones and are much easier to harvest. I read that once the growing tip reaches the max height it can and droops over an enzyme is produced(or production stops) and the plant begins making laterals. They can get very bushy, I think I remember seeing pictures of Denny’s hops along a fence.
I am a bush hopper, for the most part.
Limited height, and not needing an elaborate (and potentially gaudy) trellis system
are tools that the home gardener can really take advantage of.
Don’t let anybody tell you that hops will not produce if only grown to 8-10 foot tall.
Conditions vary across the NA region, but here in the intermountain west:
easy growers for me include Magnum, Sterling, Mt. Hood, Cascade, Nugget, Zeus, Crystal, Chinook.
Hard to produce are Hallertauer, Santiam, Tett, Perle, Willamette…
Have fun planning.
Um yea, dano, forget that gaudy statement…I just looked at that picture of your wood arbor…that thing is beautiful! :-*
Thank you!
I didn’t build it specifically for hops, but once I started brewing I figured it would work well. And the hops could pull double duty as shade and beer ingredient. ;D
Honestly, I didn’t use half barrells, and they are doing fine… I will transplant after 2 more years though.
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.