So today the weather (and timing) cooperated enough to allow me to get out and set my hop rhizomes into the ground. I set all the plants I had in about 22 wells.
Each well was a "square" hole the width of one shovel per side and the length of the shovel blade deep. Instead of putting the old dirt (clay actually) back in the hole, I set the rhizome in a bed of fertilizer, then covered with the typical Tennessee clay-mud that is prominent here, and topped off with yet another layer of fertilizer.
I only did it this way as I had but two 40 lb. bags of fertilizer and waaayy too many plants compared to fertilizer. If I had gotten a third bag, I likely would've been able to fill each well with nothing but fertilizer. Of course, this was my first time, so I really didn't know what to expect and underpurchased rather than bought too much. Oh well, live and learn.
Some of those wells contained two or three of the smaller rhyzomes, but about 4 or 5 wells were single plants. When it was all said and done, I wound up with two rows of plants -- one row with 12 wells, the other had 10. Upon setting the last plant in the ground, I sprayed each down with some water.
Tomorrow we are due to get some pretty significant rain so I am pretty stoked that the ground will get wet enough to go with the heavy fertilization that maybe some growth will start occurring. Right now, it is time to sit back and wait on Nature to take her course.
Once I get some sprouts popping up, I need to go to phase 3 and put some pressure treated 4 X 4's in the ground and build up a trellis-type system for the hops to grow on (as they are basically vines). I am thinking about setting a couple 4 X 4's in the ground nailing a 2 X 4 to the both of them and then putting eye hooks in the 2 X 4 and stringing that toward the ground to allow the hops to grow on.
I wish I had more varieties available, but am glad to have what I got and am anxious to see how the first year's harvest turns out. ; )
1 comment:
one thing that I did when I grew was to "grind" the dirt. Basically, it took the clay, broke it up with my hands, mixed in some sand and good soil, and used that to fill the holes.
The other thing we did was to make the initial hole about the size of the mature plant's root ball. With the proper soil there, the plants took off.
I hope that by "fertilizer," you're not meaning granulated/concentrated fertilizer...
something else you might consider is tilling the soil and adding some of the horse manure that's so readily available where you are...
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