How to proceed with gifted crown

A brewing buddy of mine gave me a hop crown in a planter last year. From what i remember, He said it was about three years old and produced a small amount of hops. He didn't know what type of hop plant it was , but i don't really care. Last year, without really knowing what to do with it, i trained the bines, one to a string, and they never grew from that point on. After watching some videos, i realized i twisted thwm way too tight and should have used three bines per string. I nwver fed the plant but have been watering it daily, which i now know is a mistake.

So i'm at a loss as to how to proceed. Right now theres about 7 or 8 bines, from3-4 inches to about a foot, and they're a mixture of healthy and unhealthy looking. A few of the bines' leaves have become brown around the edges and look an unhealthy shade of green. They get about 8 hours of sun a day and temps have been in the 50's at night and up to 70 in the day.

So my questions are
1. How often should i feed them and with what?
2. Should i start training them already or let them grow freely some more?


Thanks in advance for any help that can be offered.

Here are a couple more pics

i tried to PM you a pdf but I dont see an attach. Its just over the attach limit size. If you PM me your email Ill send you a pdf I found that was better than most and a quick read. I didnt have much luck down South here but I will sure try as soon as we move.

I can say get that grass and weeds out of the soil and mulch.

Have you considered putting it into the ground? If it's 3 years old, it's probably getting root bound. Keeping them in pots like that is only going to get you so far with such a monster of a plant. If you're dead set on keeping it in the pot and want to see what happens, then I would water it about once a week. Tip the pot a few inches once is a while and see how heavy it is, this will give you a better idea of how often to water. When the pot starts getting light, water it. As for feeding, I've been using miracle grow tomatoe food. Since you have a potted plant, be careful not to over feed. You'll burn it if you do. I would just mix as directed (makes 1.5 gallons) and use maybe 1/2 gallon every other watering. Dump in the half gallon of food and then some water on top of that. Make sure you get a little bit of runoff from the holes at the bottom of the pot ~10% everytime you water. From there just experiment and see what works. If things are going well, keep upping the food little by little. If you get to a point where the plant burns a little, back off to a previous level that was working before. You also may need to flush the pot once in a while. Nutrient salts may start to build up in the potting soil after a while (which is toxic to the plant) and will need to be flushed out. Flush with 3-4 gal of water per gallon of soil. After you flush, go back to business as usual. If you have a pH meter and a way to collect the runoff from the pot, it's a good idea to keep an eye on pH as well. pH should be at or a little below 7. As you can see, it's much easier and more productive to grow them in the ground if you have the space.

I haven't considered planting in the ground. I read that the roots will take over everything around it and strangle out surrounding plants. Not sure how true that is. My vegetable garden is right next to the only spot I have to plant the crown. I don't want to lose my veg garden so i never really considered planting it. Maybe the info i read is wrong and i should just throw it in the ground

Email should come through. Much easier this way and it will answer questions you haven't thought of yet. Let me know if the email doesn't come and I'll resend. "both of y'all"

mikeysab said:

I haven't considered planting in the ground. I read that the roots will take over everything around it and strangle out surrounding plants. Not sure how true that is. My vegetable garden is right next to the only spot I have to plant the crown. I don't want to lose my veg garden so i never really considered planting it. Maybe the info i read is wrong and i should just throw it in the ground

Click to expand...

They will sprawl on you and send out runners. You just need to dig up the runners once in a while and trim them back to the crown. I did that myself this spring for a few of my hops. Doesn't take that long to do. I dug up one runner that was 4 or 5 feet long on my centennial. When you do this, some of the runners will have sprouts (ie rhizomes) and you can give them away if anyone local wants them. I don't think planting a crown near your vegetable garden will be a huge problem as long as you keep it under control.

I was trying to avoid digging vines out of my lawn. Plus, the spot i have to plant the crown gets half the amount of sunlight as where i have it in the planter right now. If I do put it in the ground, is the reduced sun time going to be worth the benefit of geting it out of the planter?

The amount of happiness the plant will enjoy by being planted in the ground will far outweigh the sunlight factor. Like BBL said, all you have to do is to cut around the crown on a yearly basis to keep the rhizomes from creeping out and you'll be fine. The roots have nothing to do with the potential 'overtaking of the neighborhood', just do a quick pruning around the crown every Spring and enjoy the growth. Hoppy Trails!

Ok, so i guess putting it in the ground is the way to go. So do i just dig a hole and throw it in with the same soil its been in or should i get some compost? I dont have access to any great soil, just what home depot sells. Then feed as BBL described, correct? Thanks for all the good info, guys.

Just buy a bag of compost/steer manure and plant and mix that in with whatever is in your pot and bury the crown so the bines are peeking out the top..its hard to say how deep that will be, but it could be a big root system already in that pot.

Can I have that PDF too?

Pm me your email

Me or Miley got it?

Sorry Mikey, auto correct I swear, lol

No problem. I get it all the time. I never got his email.

Since my daughter was home sick from school today, figured i'd have her pitch in. She dug a nice 2.5 to 3 foot deep hole. Now i gotta get to the depot for some compost and that bad boy is goinnin the ground. After a day of rain, the leaves seemed to look a little better. The bines are starting to wrap around each other and one or two are flopped over. Gonna get her into the ground and start training the bines ASAP. Thanks for all the good info, fellas.

Glad to see you're making progress. Hope it works out for ya. And like Hoppy said, the lack of full day sun shouldn't be an issue. I have some east facing plants nestled next to a garage that only get sun up until a couple hours past mid day and they produce just fine.

Cheers

Thanks BBL. Theyre actually doing very well. I marked the strings the other day and they grew about 3 inches past the mark in a day. I fertilized on wednesday with Miracle gro tomato food and covered the mound with mulch. I added a bag of compost with bovine manure along with the potting soil and a touch of native soil when i transplanted. I trained one really long bine on three seperate strings along with one shorter bine. There are still two or three bines that are too short to trsin bit hopefully they'll cstch on and be trainable soon