Hop garden

“ The Hop is a very effective plant for draping a thin specimen Arbor–vitæ, or Yew tree, but the shoots should be thinned out in spring, and not more than three or four allowed to climb up to the tree. When the leader emerges from the top of the bush, and throws its long, graceful wreaths of Hops over the dark green foliage, the contrast is most effective. ”

“ In front of the stoup, where we dined, the garden was laid out with a smooth plot of grass, surrounded with borders of flowers, and separated from a ripening field of wheat by a light railed fence, over which the luxuriant hop-vine flung its tendrils and graceful blossoms. Now I must tell you the hop is cultivated for the purpose of making a barm for raising bread. As you take great interest in housewifery concerns, I shall send you a recipe for what we call hop- rising*. ”

“ Here, too, you see hop-gardens; looking more than a little bare in spring, but with plenty of work going on, chiefly in trimming and tarring the ends of the new ash-poles that are to be planted, thick as forests, for the hop-bines to grow upon. Here and there are the hutches in which the hop-pickers will live in August, and now and again you see an oast-house; the old buildings with their quaint outlines, the new apt to be eye-sorrows for angularity and sheer commonplace ugliness. ”

“ Fred Scott, tenant of the farm, of which Lord Hothfield is owner, is kind enough to go over the hop-garden with us, and describe all the details. When the hops are ripe (i. e. when the seeds are hard) and ready to be gathered, the pickers swarm on the ground, and a man divides the "bine" at the bottom of the "pole" by means of a bill-hook—not cutting it too close for fear of bleeding—leaving the root to sprout next year, and then draws out the pole, to which is attached the long, creeping bine, trailing over at top. ”

“ In the old or pole system a pine pole 20 feet high is set in the ground beside each plant, and two vines are trained upon it, being held in position by straw wisps or bits of twine, which are renewed during the season as they rot or are torn away. The newer method, or wire system, while costing more to inaugurate, is less expensive to maintain, gives more room for cultivation between the rows, and allows a freer circulation of air through the garden. Hop diseases are reputed to be less prevalent in such gardens. ”

“ Humulus Japonicus, or the annual Hop, is one of the best rapid-growing screen vines in cultivation. It makes a dense canopy of attractive foliage. The leaves are finely cut, and in one variety variegated with white. This variegated variety is a fine vine for a porch or front screen, always attracting attention to its markings. This Hop is propagated by seed sown in boxes in March. When once established, it will seed itself and start as soon as the soil becomes warm. Set plants 4 to 8 feet apart. ”

“ When it does sprout the same season, the seed germinates 134in from eight to ten days. The plants do equally well on north, south, east or west walls, but should be kept sufficiently watered on the south or west.
There is but one precaution I have found necessary in growing the Japanese Hop: namely, to give it a rather elastic support, a twine trellis being better than a rigid wire one. The finest Japanese Hop I ever saw grew over a south window on a trellis of chicken netting; the growth was wonderful, and the great leaves were beautifully splashed with white. ”

“ The variety known as Fuggle’s, a heavy-cropping though slightly coarse hop, has been much planted in the Weald of Kent, and in parts of Mid Kent where the soil is suitable. In very old hop gardens, where there has been no change of plant for fifty or even one hundred years in some instances, except from the gradual process of filling up the places of plants that have died, there has been replanting with better varieties and varieties ripening in more convenient succession ”

“ On debouching from the road over which the tall poles with the slender stems of the hops twining and clambering, though leafless and faded, formed an archway through the thick and dense hop gardens that bordered each side of the way, the advanced guard uttered a shout of surprise and defiance, and halted till the main body came up. ”

“ The chief employment of the women is in the hop gardens and orchards, and in the former there is continuous work for the greater part of the year.
As the culture of the hop is peculiar to this district, it may be necessary to give a brief description of the mode in which it is conducted. The land is prepared with considerable attention by fallowing, deep stirring, and cleaning; it is next thrown into rows of little hillocks at equal distances; and in these hillocks the young shoots of the hop (previously nursed in the orchard) are planted. ”

“ Forests of magnificent timber afforded materials for the carpenter and the ship-builder—plantations of hops gave employment to the cultivators, the merchants, and the brewers of malt liquors; and orchards of cherries were in constant demand from one end of the island to the other. Now the timber has either been cut down, or died of natural decay—the hop gardens have given place to crops of luxuriant weeds—and [72] the sweet and luscious fruits have become wild and sour. ”

“ It is to these lupulinic glands that the medicinal properties of the hop are chiefly due. By careful sifting about 1 oz. may be obtained from 1 ℔ of hops, but the East Kent variety is said to yield more than the Sussex hops.
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In hop gardens a few male plants, usually three or four to an acre, are sometimes planted, that number being deemed sufficient to fertilize the female flowers. The blossoms are produced in August, and the strobiles are fit for gathering from the beginning of September to the middle of October, according to the weather. ”

“ His fortunes had fallen off sadly in the last few years of his life, but he worked away as steadily at his trade as in the old days, when, looking from his door, his eyes were met by the mast-like masses of a Kentish hop orchard. He had planted hopvines all about the fence of his little house in Jamestown. They clambered up the sides of the house, twined insinuatingly about the disdainful sunflowers, and throwing their tendrils abroad from the roots wound round and round the tall stalks of grass, weighing them down with the burden of their unsought embrace. ”

“ HOPS are the dried flower-buds of a climbing British plant (Humulus lupulus, Fig. 81) , with a rough and angular stem, and leaves generally in three or five lobes or divisions, and serrated. Although hops grow wild, in great abundance, on hedges in several parts of the south of England, there is reason to suppose that their use was first made known from the Continent in the reign of Henry the Eighth.
A hop plantation requires the growth of some years before it is in perfection. The plants begin to push up their young stems about the month of April. ”

“ Its great value consists in that it is the seed of the hop plant, all seeds contributing by far the greatest value in manures.
In the green-house the object aimed at, is the greatest possible results from limited area. Of the atmosphere the gardener has almost absolute control—no siroccos, biting frost, or destructive winds interfere. He can beat nature all to pieces in growing plants faultless in shape and in quantity of flowers, but his soil is of limited extent for the roots to wander in. ”

“ The southern counties of England, particularly Surrey and Kent, now yield their valuable produce of hops in this month. The common hop, humulus lupulus, is propagated either by nursery plants or by cuttings. These are set in hills, formed by digging holes in the spring, which are filled with fine mould, and the number of which varies from 800 to 1,000, or 1,200 per acre. One, two, or three plants are put in each hill; but, if hops are designed to be raised from cuttings, four or five of these, from three to four inches in length, are planted and covered one inch deep with fine mould. ”

“ Here we have the oak—of both varieties known to planters, to be hereafter described—flourishing most luxuriantly on the stiff soil of the gault; the chalk-marl, upper green sand, and gault—the two latter only partially—being engaged in hop cultivation. [275] The green sand surrounding the forest is mostly devoted to the growth of larch or spruce, the thinnings of which are used for hop-poles and the larger trees are left as timber-belts; whilst the beech will be found to favour the chalk. Hops and other cultivated plants flourish according to geological position. ”

“ If we could only have one creeper out of all there are, we would have this Jasmine, which flowers in winter, and is quite hardy. Be sure not to let anyone prune yours in autumn. Ignorant gardeners often do this, and cut off all the shoots that wanted to flower. Any pruning necessary should be done in March or April, but you need only cut out dead wood. The charming sprays, if cut in bud, come out well in water.
The Hop is a graceful, hardy, and quick-growing climber, and there is a variegated kind that some people prefer. A Hop will cover a big arch in one year. ”

“ We have some uncommonly fine hops in the woods, and in some of the prairies; {217} we found them very convenient for making yeast. They are of the white-bine sort, like the grape-hop of England. I intend to plant a few hills in the spring, as I can get plenty from the woods; and I have saved a few seeds, to see if it will improve them or not. They usually grow on the sides of creeks, and on low rich bottoms that are not liable to be flooded, that is always on the best soil.
The wild flowers of the prairies are numerous, and many of them are beautiful ”

“ On the portions most easily cleared some three hundred acres of hop vines have been planted and are now in full bearing, yielding, it is said, at the rate of about a ton of hops to the acre. They are a beautiful crop, these vines of the north, pillars of verdure in regular rows, seven feet apart and eight or ten feet in height; the long, vigorous shoots sweeping round in fine, wild freedom, and the light, leafy cones hanging in loose, handsome clusters. ”

“ The fields themselves are beautiful, indeed. The varied shades of green, from the darker hues of the older leaves to the delicate sea green of the new tendrils as they wreathe themselves about the tall poles, or twine about the wires which in many fields run from pole to pole, forming a beautiful green canopy from end to end of the large fields. Not the least interesting part of the hop ranches are the store and dry-houses. The hops are dried by hot air process, and are then baled and ready for shipment. King Revelry holds high carnival in the hop districts when the hops are ripe. ”

“ Around the fence-post, where the versi-colored fungus grows, the moon-seed winds its stems, like strands of twine. Its broad leaves are set like tilted mirrors to catch and reflect the light. Trailing among the grass the pea-vine lifts itself so that its blossoms next month shall attract the bees. The wild hop is reaching over the bushes for the branches of the low-growing elm from which to hang its fruit clusters. Circling up the trunk and the spreading branches of the elm, the Virginia creeper likewise strives for better and greater light. ”

“ Another well-known adage reminds us that:—
"The higher the hill the lower the grass."
And equally familiar is the following:—
"While the grass groweth the seely horse starveth."
In connection with hops, the proverb runs that "hops make or break;" and no hop-grower, writes,
Mr. Hazlitt, [3] "will have much difficulty in appreciating this proverbial dictum. An estate has been lost or won in the course of a single season; but the hop is an expensive plant to rear, and a bad year may spoil the entire crop." ”

“ At the end of the first year it becomes necessary to put poles into the hills, round which the bines reared from plants are wound; at the expiration of the second year, full-sized poles, from 15 to 20 feet, are set, (though the hop-bines will run to the height of 50 feet,) in the proportion of two poles to each hill, and a similar number of hop-plants are fastened loosely round each pole, by means of withered rushes. Hops begin to flower about the latter end of June or the beginning of July. ”

“ In Auscha there are old laws which enforce their immediate removal. Such male plants are called wild hops and are most abundant in waste places about the gardens. A single male plant in a garden will fertilize enough females to materially injure the whole harvest by the formation of a high percentage of seed in the otherwise seedless flowers. When the number of hops with seeds reaches more than two-tenths of one per cent they are rated in Bohemia as of second grade quality. I was told in Saaz that English and American hops contain quantities of seed even as high as 6 and 7 per cent. ”

“ And what is stranger still, this same bone-earth bed crops out on the south side of the chalk at Farnham, and stretches along the foot of those downs, right into Kent, making the richest hop lands in England, through Surrey, and away to Tunbridge. So that it seems as if the bed lay under the chalk everywhere, if once we could get down to it.
But how does it make the hop lands so rich?
Because hops, like tobacco and vines, take more phosphorus out of the soil than any other plants which we grow in England ”

“ It however appears certain that hops belong to our indigenous plants, as they grow everywhere wild in Germany, Switzerland, England, and Sweden, and even in countries387 into which the cultivation of them has never yet been introduced, and where it cannot be supposed that they accidentally became wild by being conveyed from hop-fields and gardens. ”