Hops grow better with spring pruning. Take better care of your hop plants. Get more out the plants that you have! Here are 3 reasons to prune. And tips for making the most out of pruning hop shoots.
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Even if you don't brew beer, hops are great plants to have in your home landscape. They are such tough plants, they are almost weeds. But hops will do better with just a little bit of help, to prune and train them in the spring.
In this video, I'm giving you 3 reasons for pruning your hop plants in the spring. I follow that with tips on how to be the most effective at pruning your hop shoots, and how to get the most out of your plants. Home hop growers have some real advantages over commercial operations.
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REASON 1 - INCREASE YOUR YIELD
The goal of pruning the hop shoots is to focus the hop plant's energy on making hop flowers and cones. Those first shoots in spring want to run and spread that hop plant, to cover a lot of distance and set roots. So there's a long distance between the nodes where the leaves come out.
But look how hops grow. The flowers that turn into hop cones grow on side shoots from the nodes. So the closer the nodes are, the bigger your yield can be.
In addition, those first ho shoots are hollow. They are not strong. It's easy for them to kink and snap. And then you have a busted bine - and that's no good!
Yes, I said "Bine". With a B, and not "Vine" with a V. "Bine" is a botanical distinction about how the plant wraps around stuff like a boa constrictor, rather than using tendrils like a grape vine.
If you cut off all the early shoots, the later bines that come up are not hollow. And they have a lot shorter spaces between the side shoots that bear the hop crop. Bby pruning, you'll have stronger bines and more side shoots to give you a larger hop crop.
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REASON 2 - DISEASE PREVENTION
Pruning your hop shoots will cut down on the risk and severity of 2 big diseases of hops - powdery mildew and downy mildew.
Even though powdery mildew and downy mildew are completely unrelated, they both overwinter, down underground, inside the buds of next year's growth -- in the tips of the shoots that come up in the spring.
So commercial growers, to be efficient, come though once or twice, with machines or chemical sprays to remove or kill all those early buds and the first flush of vegetation.
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REASON 3 - EAT YOUR HOP SHOOTS
Here's where home hop growers have a real advantage over commercial growers. We get to eat the hop shoots that we prune! Hop plants are worth growing, just for the early shoots.
Most commercial hop growers can't afford to harvest their hop shoots. But as home hop growers, we can watch over our hops and harvest those shoots all through the spring.
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HOP PRUNING TIPS
When you first see those earliest shoots, cut them off. It's OK to cut them off below ground level, where the shoots are white and tender. And great for making pickled hop shoots. As the spring progresses, keep cutting the shoots back.
That's anytime temperatures are above 40 degrees F and the soil is wet. Especially if cloudy, overcast conditions stick around and there's high humidity at around the hop vegetation.
If any shoots look stunted, wilted, covered with a white coating, or just weird in any way, get rid of them. But the ones that look good are fine to eat.
Keep cutting all the shoots, every one, until 3 or 4 weeks before you want to train your hop bines to go up their support structure. Do the last pruning and harvest of hop shoots when you are selecting the 3-4 bines to train to grow up their support and bear the late summer hop crop. For all the other bines, break off the tips to eat, and cut off their main bines at ground level.
The season for pruning hop shoots can be long. This year, I started pruning my hops on February 26 and finished when I trained my bines on May 3.
So there can be a lot of hop shoots to harvest and eat! You can eat them, freeze the, or get a couple jars ready to make pickled hop shoots. Put your harvest, a few shoots at a time, in the pickle jar. That's easy!
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So now you are ready to increase your harvest of hop cones, protect your plants from disease, and enjoy a springtime bonus harvest of hop shoots. Happy hop growing!
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My hops playlist:
• Hops: How to Grow and ...
Individual Hop Videos:
How to Pick, Process and Store Hops: • Hops: How to harvest, ...
5 Ways to Eat Hop Shoots: • 5 Ways to Eat Hop Shoo...
How to Make Pickled Hop Shoots: • Hops: How to Pickle Ho...
Grilled Hop Shoots: My Favorite Recipe: • Grilled Hop Shoots - B...
Music: "Marty Gots a Plan" - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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My channel: Haphazard Homestead: / @haphazardhomestead
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