ferteliser for hop plants

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Permalink Reply by Brett Mason on November 6, 2011 at 3:54pm

I've got a copy of "The Homebrewer's Garden" which recommends a good mix of compost or well rotted manure. Mine are in containers so unfortunately I don't have the space to keep adding manure.

 

For mine I used a base of potting mix (Yates premium stuff, wasn't cheap) and sheep pellets. I found that by mid December they were showing what I think was nitrogen deficiency so I started adding regular doses of a liquid fertiliser and things came right.

This year I've moved to larger 75 litre bags (biggest I could find) with some home made compost and slow release fertiliser. Will see how it goes but I expect they will be needing plenty of extra liquid fertiliser.

 

Would also be interested to hear what others are using for container hops. Particularly any liquid fertilisers that would be more effective (and cheaper) than the Yates stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Christian on November 6, 2011 at 8:54pm

I recently got some Yates Dynamic Lifter pellets:

http://www.yates.co.nz/products/fertilising/organic-based/dynamic-l...

Seems to be doing the trick though it smells totally awful!

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Permalink Reply by Pilgrim on November 7, 2011 at 11:35am

Sheep Poo is all I use. They let sheep run through the hop fields once they are full height (the hop bines that is, not the sheep) and this helps keep down the weeds, control secondary growth and provides fertiliser.

If it's good enough for the pro's.....................

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Grierson on November 7, 2011 at 12:26pm

Hops are gross feeders, same as citrus and other heavy yeilding plants. Basicly they are greedy for nutrients and are hard to over feed. Blood and bone, sheep pellets,worm farm tea, some of your own wee's (so long as you are not too dehydrated) all work sweet.

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Permalink Reply by Chad Keven on November 9, 2011 at 10:06am

just dumped some fert made from koi carp broken down with an aerobic digestion process inside machines 100% organic plants will leap out of the ground! check it out here

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Grierson on November 9, 2011 at 10:49am

I like the idea of this process, but there must be some greenhouse gasses created by the bacteria, less than landfill though.

Another thing to think about is the taste of your hops, if you keep feeding them into the budding stage they will taste a bit 'ferty', hydroponic growers usually cut the feeding right back when the fruit/flowers form. 

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Permalink Reply by Chad Keven on November 9, 2011 at 2:35pm

no co2 whatsover other than caused by the electricity and transport, the process itself is a very "dark shade of green" the only gas is nitrogen lost as ammonia. the atmoshere is 75% nitrogen anyway

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Permalink Reply by Martin Bridges on November 9, 2011 at 4:44pm

I thought you were suggesting you'd eaten some koi carp then taken a dump on your hops!

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Permalink Reply by Chad Keven on November 10, 2011 at 11:32am

haha! na wouldnt eat one of those stinky fckrs!

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