PLANTING AND CULTURE. 101 



About this time the hops will be in the burr. Some- 

 times they hang there a long time before coming out 

 into the hop, and sometimes they fail to come out at all, 

 or else have small, knobby and inferior hops. Cultivat- 

 ing, horse-hoeing, and hilling at this time of the year 

 help to bring them out of the burr more quickly and 

 advance the^crop to maturity. If any storms blow 

 down the poles, they must be set up again as soon as 

 possible. " 



Abroad, the plow is seldom put into a hop field, 

 but the soil is turned over by hand with a spading fork 

 or spud (Fig. 45) in late fall or as soon as the ground 

 can be worked in spring. As soon as the vines have 

 been tied up, a two-horse cultivator is run quite deeply 

 into the ground, followed by a more shallow cultiva- 

 tion by lighter, one-horse hoe. The latter is used fre- 



FIG. 46. TYING KNOT. 



quently until mid-July. The hand hoe is used to keep 

 down weeds about the hills, and the soil about the hills 

 not touched by the cultivator is worked once or twice 

 with the Canterbury prong-hoe (Fig. 45). "Earthing, 

 or putting earth over the stocks between the poles, is 

 done by placing four or five shovelfuls of fine earth over 

 them in June, to keep the bines in their places and to 

 ensure a growth of roots for cuttings, or sets. It also 

 stops the extraneous growth of bines from the stocks, 

 which would exhaust them, and keeps them in their 

 places." With slight modification, these methods pre- 

 vail throughout Europe as well as England. 



The practice of running the cultivator deeply in 

 June, so as to break up the mass of fine rootlets from 

 the hop roots, is adhered to by many careful growers, 

 both in England and on the continent. The scientific 



