OnTap Magazine

PLANTING LOCATION AND LIGHT The hop is a climbing plant. It’s not a vine (which uses its tendrils to cling to supports), but a bine, which wraps its stem around a structure to gain height and ultimately get more sun. Therefore it will need support to grow against. The most economical and easy option is to rig up a rope or string (in hop-growing lingo it’s called a “coir”) at an angle no less than 55 degrees. The challenge is to get a tying point for the upper part of the rope. I found the tepee approach to be the most cost effective – a central pole about six metres high with 18 hop plants spaced at a 2.5m distance around the pole. This also allows you to easily install a systemwhere you can lower the strings during maintenance or harvesting time, especially if you don’t like working at heights. Hops love the sun, so it is important to select the growing location to have optimal sun availability. Some LED cool white spotlights can also be an effective way to make the hops think they’re growing in long sunlight hours. If you use lights, remember to reduce the time of light exposure as soon as your hops have reached the height you want. The reduced light will force the hops to start growing sideways (side arms) and set flowers. These are initially called burs, and later become those all-important cones. PLANT MAINTENANCE Mildew can become a challenge for hops during high humidity. For this reason it’s important to trim back all leaves and excess stems around the base of the hops up to about 60cm. Trimming excess shoots will also provide better growth to the primary bines, and provide better production. Once the stems are about 30-40cm long, train one to three bines clockwise around the string. Bull shoots might be present in the first growth of the season, these bines are thicker than normal bines, the nodes are far apart, have a purple colour, and are hollow. These bines are less productive, and should be trimmed back to soil level. Hops are frost-hardy. They can survive very cold spells, but a good mulch layer will help to protect them. In winter the bines dry out and die back to soil level. Bines should be removed from the strings. I have learned it is 100% more difficult to untangle new growth from old dried bines, and less painful to remove them in winter. The bines have very sharp tiny thorns that take great pleasure in scratching and removing the skin from your flesh! HOPS FOR DINNER The growing tips of new hop shoots are regarded as a delicacy in some countries – give them a go. PLANTING I have found that live hops plants (made from tiny green cuttings) aremuchmore effective to establish than the traditional rhizome method and I have successfully couriered many hop plants around the country with just a few losses of plant. Rhizomes are however still used where live plants are not readily available or where courier services do not exist. Hops need well drained soils, they don’t like “wet feet”. They are not drought resistant, so keep soil moist with a good irrigation schedule rather than drowning them at once. I found dripper lines to be very effective, as this also limits water availability to weeds. They also grow well in aquaponic and hydroponic systems due to the regular aerating of the growing medium. Hops love nitrogen, especially during the first vegetative growth time. Regular light applications of nitrogen rich fertiliser can be applied with watering. Their roots seem sensitive to over fertilising, and I have managed to “murder” a few plants by applying too much fertiliser at a time in the past. A safer option that we use now is to add lots of compost and organic matter during planting, and also to use organic material for mulching around the plant to help keep the soil moist. Remember that the hop plant’s root system is massive, and it easily can stretch over a 1.5m from the base of the plant, so provide enough mulch. Later you can easily make rhizome cuttings by just scratching open the mulch layer. Gert's main hop, NAK, is named after his family farm Hops making their way up the coirs on Gert's tepee setup When using fresh hops in a beer, you need about five times the weight of pellets Hop rhizomes ready for planting ontapmag.co.za | Autumn 2022 | 25