You can also grow hops in your own garden. You can propagate the plant yourself by taking cuttings or growing hops from seeds. However, you should only sow hops if you do not want to harvest any fruit from the hops.
The seeds for sowing hops can be collected in the fall
Hop seed must be stratified
If you have harvested hop seeds from your own hop plants, you must stratify them before sowing. Put the seeds in the fridge for a few weeks. The germ inhibition is overcome by the cold.
How to sow hops
- Prepare seed box
- Scatter hop seeds
- cover lightly with soil
- Pour carefully or spray better
- keep warm but not too sunny
Spring is the best time to sow hops. Fill the seed box or small pots with loose potting soil.
After emergence, separate the plants and continue cultivating them in individual pots. You can plant the hops from May. You can plant the hops directly outdoors or keep them as a privacy screen for the balcony or in a bucket.
Whether a hop plant is male or female can only be determined when it develops flowers. The sexes can only be distinguished by the shape of the flower. You should therefore only sow hops if you only want to grow them as an ornamental plant, a privacy screen or to green a pergola.
Better to propagate hops vegetatively
Sowing is not the best way to propagate hops. You do not know beforehand whether female or male plants will emerge. Only female plants carry the coveted hops with the lupulin powder.
It is better to propagate hops by cutting cuttings or by dividing the roots in autumn than by sowing. Only vegetative propagation ensures that the characteristics of the mother plant are taken over 100%, both in terms of sex and aromas.
In commercial cultivation, propagation is exclusively vegetative in order to obtain female plants of particularly high quality.
tips
If you live in an area where hops are grown commercially, it is better not to sow hops. If male plants develop from this, you must destroy them, as they could fertilize female flowers and thereby affect the quality of the hop fruit.