Planted the Hop Rhizomes Today

We have a good yard for growing hops. With very few trees there is quite a bit of direct sunlight all day long. We chose to plant the hops behind our garage in order to have a wind break to protect the bines. Instead of using the garage roof, a modified version of the hops trellis found at Power's Brewery will be installed. The trellis will accomoate four pairs of hop rhizomes. A post on the trellis build will be up soon.

In order to help with drainage, we decided to plant four pairs of hop rhizomes in small hills spaced 8 feet apart. This required removing the grass from behind our garage in a 25' x 3' strip. The grass in our backyard is a combination of crab grass and weeds, so removing a large strip was not a big deal. It came up pretty easily with the use of a spade and our bare hands. We ended up using a bunch of the removed sod to patch up some spots in the yard. Hopefuly, it will take. When we finished pulling up the sod we had a grass and weed free strip of soil to work with. Our soil is very rocky with quite a bit of shale. While drainage is a bit of a problem in our yard, we chose a spot that does drain relatively well. Our original plan was to rent a rototiller and to turn over this entire strip. After some discussion, and a check of rental prices, we decided that we could manage this task by hand. Instead of turning over the entire strip we dug out a 2' x 2' square to a depth of about 1.5 feet for each rhizome hill. We mixed the removed soil with a combination of humus and manure and added this back into the holes creating a small hill. We created four of these spaced 8 feet apart.

In the first hill we planted a pair of Centennial hop rhizomes, in the second hill we planted a pair of Kent Golding hop rhizomes, in the third we planted a pair of jumbo (older and more established) Nugget rhizomes, and in the fourth we planted a pair of jumbo Mount Hood hop rhizmomes. The rhizomes need to be planted a couple of inches from the surface, with the buds facing towards the top of the soil.

Once all of the rhizomes were planted, they were given a good soaking. We covered the entire strip with mulch in order to keep down any weed growth and to help retain soil moisture through the summer.

Planting hop rhizomes