I was not expecting this at all!
When we moved to Arkansas, we set up a temporary garden site. I used it to test out how various plants responded to the climate here, try a few new varieties, and keep things alive that I would want later. My hops plants were one of the perennials that I was just keeping alive somewhere until I could get them into their permanent location. Since we bought our land last year, I will no longer be using the temporary garden site.
MOVING DAY!
Today was moving day for my hops plants. I had erected a pole for them to climb up and have kept them in five gallon buckets for the two years. They enjoy being out in the sun, so they did great for me and we had a good harvest last year. Today it was time to move them down to the land in preparation for spring planting.
When I went to move the buckets, some of them seemed stuck to the earth. Sure enough, the rhizomes had grown out of the buckets and deep into the earth. The plants in the buckets will stay alive just fine from the rhizomes still in the buckets, so these roots will all be able to produce new plants!
BURIED TREASURE
This was the part that I enjoyed most. First off, I had an unexpected surprise! I didn't realize the hidden blessing waiting for me under these buckets. Secondly, now I had to dig my treasure up! Many of the rhizomes thankfully went sideways beneath the surface. The ones that went straight down are too deep to uproot, but I did my best to get what I could.
Some of the ones that I was able to pull up were impressively long and branching. Since you can start a new plant from just a few inches of rhizome, I could potentially make more than a dozen new plants from the section pictured above. I was so glad that I kept these hops plants alive, because now not only do I still have the original plants, and not only did they provide me with a harvest, but they reproduced like crazy too! Mind you that I want to get into plant propagation as a potential source of income, so stuff like this is awesome!!!
A few of my @little-peppers were nearby playing with our young bucklings, so they got to see all of the excitement too! Just look at how big those rhizomes are that Monster Truck the Pepper is holding! He likes a good chance to dig in the dirt too, so we had some fun together!
ON TO THE NEXT YEAR!
Hops are most well known as a bittering agent in the brewing of beer. They have other uses too such as tinctures and sleep pillows, but beer is where they get their claim to fame. My brother enjoys brewing his own beer so he started the online store HIGH HOPPAGE.
Besides marketing various hops and homebrew merchandise, he enjoys growing his own hops and making his own homebrew. Since hops rhizomes propagate well, he blessed me with some a while ago, and then sent down some more ten months ago when @grandpa-pepper came for a visit. They have certainly turned into a gift that keeps on giving.
Here is a photo of one of the bines growing last year and producing a lot of the hops flowers, called cones. We had an excellent harvest last year and so far, I've been impressed in many ways with this plant. Since it can grow up to about twenty feet long in a season, many people enjoy using them for shade too.
To find so many rhizomes (AKA free hops plants) growing under the buckets was a surprising blessing for me. I love digging in the dirt and having fun in the garden, but I wasn't expecting to do anything like this today. That is one giant pile of rhizomes, and I can't wait to get more plants started.
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-hops-rhizomes-in-an-artsy-sort-of-way
Until next time…
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