Hop: Sowing, planting and harvest calendar
How do you sow hops under cover?
Use seeds identified as Humulus lupulus and check whether they have already received a dormancy-breaking treatment. Sowing produces variable seedlings, useful for observation or ornamental growing. It guarantees neither all-female plants nor seedlings identical to a named variety. If you want cones with known characteristics, choose an identified female plant instead.
For untreated seeds, allow for a period of moist chilling. As a guide, keep them for about eight weeks at around 4 °C in slightly moist growing medium, without freezing them; adjust this to the instructions for your seed lot. You can spread them in a small, clean pot with drainage holes and cover them with about 5 mm of fine seed compost. Label the species, origin and date. Check moisture without soaking the mixture.
After chilling, move the sowing under cover into the light and moderate warmth, around 25 °C. Watch for emerging seedlings: germination can be uneven, with no guaranteed waiting time for every seed. Ventilate and keep the compost moist but not saturated. Once seedlings have several true leaves, pot them individually and give their climbing stems a small support. Gradually acclimatise them to outdoor conditions before planting out.
When and how should you plant hops?
When and how should you harvest hops?
