A hop plant is either male or female. Male hops are only grown in the garden for ornamental purposes, as they do not bear fruit. This is how you can tell if you are growing male or female hops.

Male hop flowers are rather inconspicuous

Identify male hop plants by the flower

As long as the hops have not formed bud sites, you cannot tell if the plant is male or female. The sexes can only be distinguished by the different flower shapes.

  • Female flower spike in the shape of a cone
  • male flower in panicle form
  • female flower inconspicuous
  • male flower yellow-green and conspicuous

If the plant is female, flowers grow on it, which have a spike in the shape of a cone. The bracts are tightly closed and the flower is small and inconspicuous.

Striking long panicles develop on a male plant.

That is why no male hop plants are grown

If fertilized by male plants, the hop fruits become unusable. They change their taste. The bred qualities of the female hop plant are lost.

If female blossoms are pollinated by male blossoms, the beer obtained from the fruit will not later form a foam crown.

If you want to process the hops yourself, you should remove male plants as soon as the sex can be identified from the flowers.

Where male hops need to be removed

In areas where hops are grown for brewing beer, breeding male hop plants is prohibited. This is to avoid male flowers fertilizing a female plant.

There you are obliged to remove male hops immediately.

Grow male hops as an ornamental plant in the garden

If the hops are only to be grown as an ornamental plant in the garden, the gender is not particularly important. Both plants are suitable as privacy screens or when caring for them in the bucket.

multiply hops

In the trade you get almost exclusively female hop plants. Male plants only develop when you sow the hops.

In commercial hop cultivation, the plant is only propagated by cuttings, so-called fechsers, or by root division.

This rules out male hops that later have to be pulled out.

tips

Hops are cannabis' legal brother. Unlike hemp, however, the fruits do not contain any THC with an intoxicating effect. Hops have a calming effect due to the lupulin that forms in the fruit and is also used for medicinal purposes.

Category:

Vegetable garden