Has anyone ever gotten hops in any other form but rhizomes? I’ve been looking for hops and the ones I’ve found either don’t ship to Canada or they require an extra payment for a phytosanitary certificate which I understand but don’t want to pay. So, I ordered some Nugget and Cascade hops from a Canadian supplier but they come as “plants” not rhizomes.
Does anyone know when it would be best to plant these? I hope they are plants derived from rhizomes or they may be pretty darn small. Not sure when I would see a cone.
One other question, I don’t have a very sunny back yard. Will they take shade? I have a lot of trees and I was thinking of trying to train them up some strings hung from the tree branches but if they won’t handle shade at all, then I’ll have to put them in a sunny spot. I have one, it’s just not that big.
I am also going to order some Northern Brewer rhizomes from another supplier but he doesn’t have any Cascade (sold out). Is there a minimum distance you need to have them seperated or is it just enough that you can tell them apart at harvest? The NB will likely go to my friend who has a gazebo that we are going to cover in hops. May as well make it more valuable.
They only come from rhizomes… so go ahead and plant them in the sunny spot, they need lots of sun, especially where you’re located. give em plenty of water, unless its raining and mulch them well.
I wouldn’t put them any closer together than 6 ft. The rhizomes will spread as they grow and it will be much easier to tell which is which if the bines don’t intertwine.
Well to be honest I planted them less to use solely for beer and more to provide shade and cool decoration to my deck - I’m hoping they’ll grow in there pretty thick. We’ll see - they’re super cheap to order from the UK so if it doesn’t work out in a couple years I’ll dig 'em up and transplant.
I’ve seen them for sale as plants, it is just a rhizome in a pot with some growth above the dirt.
As was mentioned, they won’t do very well in shade at all, the sunnier the better, and the more distance between them the better. The main thing is that after a couple of years it can be tough to tell if any particular shoot comes from one plant or another. As long as you can tell them apart you can train them up different twine and keep them separated that way. If the twine is too close then the lateral shoots will reach out and you’ll have a tangled mass of bines and cones that will be really tough to separate.
How large is large? You can get by with big pots (5 gallons is a bare, bare minimum), but you’ll need to closely monitor the water situation, and probably feed them.
I’ve had hop plants that were spreading out pretty far in my last yard, about 3 or 4 feet from the original rhizome. It was fine with me, I just put a bigger fence around them, but you could also just mow over what you don’t want.
