Growing Hops with live Bamboo

[OneInTheHand]

My first time growing hops will be this year. Current plan is to get metal trash cans for each variety and use them for basic container gardening. Logic being it would be easier to move plants later.

I have a ton of bamboo and will use poles of it for growing hops, but....

has anybody companion planted hops and bamboo? Bamboo where I live starts coming up in May, and I was thinking why not just have the bamboo grow every year, then the hops will have a pole to grow on, then at the end of the season you just cut both down.

 

[FatDragon]

This is an awesome idea, but I'm not sure I've ever seen vines or creepers growing up live bamboo, and I've lived in China for over a decade. I know bamboo poles are good because they're used for gardening all the time here, but I'm not sure about the live stuff. I also wonder if it might not eat all the nutrients in the soil because it grows so dang fast...

 

[Soulshine2]

My first time growing hops will be this year. Current plan is to get metal trash cans for each variety and use them for basic container gardening. Logic being it would be easier to move plants later.

I have a ton of bamboo and will use poles of it for growing hops, but....

has anybody companion planted hops and bamboo? Bamboo where I live starts coming up in May, and I was thinking why not just have the bamboo grow every year, then the hops will have a pole to grow on, then at the end of the season you just cut both down.

We looked into bamboo as a living fence. bamboo is extremely aggressive and invasive. It can quickly become out of control and there no known way to get rid of it where you dont want it. Be very careful of planting it.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

We looked into bamboo as a living fence. bamboo is extremely aggressive and invasive. It can quickly become out of control and there no known way to get rid of it where you dont want it. Be very careful of planting it.

That's true of many of them but some of the clump-forming ones can be quite well-behaved. However, a plant that produces that much biomass so quickly is going to be hungry for food and water, so is probably not something you want to be growing close to your hops - just use dead stuff to support them.

 

[Apimyces]

I've considered using live plants as support for hops, whether it be willows, or giant sunflowers or the like. I think hops just grow too quickly in the Spring for that, though, nutrient competition would be something to worry about (though fixable by more fertilizer) too.

 

[Still Brewn]

I've considered using live plants as support for hops, whether it be willows, or giant sunflowers or the like. I think hops just grow too quickly in the Spring for that, though, nutrient competition would be something to worry about (though fixable by more fertilizer) too.

I had thought about using sunflower also but then I remembered having one that got to height of about 18 ft and before it even started drying it fell over. No wind or anything it just broke off at the ground, the flower was about 15 inches across and weighed quite a bit. Point being although sunflower can grow fairly fast you can't predict failure. It would really suck to lose a bunch of hops because of a failure like that. It was also early August, too early to harvest hops in most cases. There is also the crushing aspect.... when the sunflower fell it left a noticeable impression in the ground where the flower landed. Another thing to think about is the harvesting, some bamboo can cut like razor blades and the thickness of a sunflower would prohibit using any kind automated of harvester unless you separated them requiring more work.
I would consider experimenting with the bamboo thing if the final end of season height of the plant was consistently over 15 ft but it is hard to predict which shoots will get that tall if they don't all get that tall. (Or what ever height you're shooting for)
Just some food for thought.
Oh and I almost forgot... The sunflower weighed a ton, it took 2 of us to move it..

 

[NitrogenWidget]

We looked into bamboo as a living fence. bamboo is extremely aggressive and invasive. It can quickly become out of control and there no known way to get rid of it where you dont want it. Be very careful of planting it.

I was thinking of planting bamboo for privacy between my yard and my neighbors but decided not to because of this.

That's true of many of them but some of the clump-forming ones can be quite well-behaved. However, a plant that produces that much biomass so quickly is going to be hungry for food and water, so is probably not something you want to be growing close to your hops - just use dead stuff to support them.

didn't know there were running and clumping varieties. Now I may decide to plant.
I probably wouldn't want any plants other than helpful plants around the hops, but I'm a new grower so I don't know what I want yet other than something to put in my beer.