556 
Management of Hops. 
top rush is put round below the second joint, for when a bine is 
tied only just below the head it prevents its goings up the polo, 
and causes it to bend out below the rush. After the poles are 
all furnished with bines the tier has then only to attend to the 
progress of them up the poles, tying up the heads that are hanging 
far away from the poles, as to have no chance of getting to the 
same pole again without ; but after a high wind hundreds of 
heads of bines will be hanging away from the poles, but when 
the wind is still they will most of them get back again, although 
many may be 12 or 14 inches away. It is therefore very wrong 
to tie them up until the wind has ceased and time left for those 
to regain the poles that will, for the less the bines are tied round 
the poles after they are got once well attached to them the better ; 
keep them well rushed around at the bottom, but higher up only 
what is quite necessary, for it is the nature of the bine to cling 
to the pole when once put there. The rush should at all times 
be tied only in a slip knot to give way as the bine increases in 
size ; if a fast knot is tied and close and tight to the pole, the 
bine will often come quite asunder with the rush, so that the 
head will drop and die, when the bine has grown out of the 
reach of the tiers : the last thing thev have to do is to clear out 
all the fresh-grown shoots (as they will by this time have many), 
and all the surplus bine left in before, and to strip off the leaves 
and branches from one to two or three feet high previous to the 
hills being earthed in, but at what time of the year this may be de- 
pends on circumstances : in forward springs and when not checked 
by the flea, the bine will be forward enough to begin to tie the 
latter end of April, sometimes by the 18th or 20th, particularly 
young ground or any others that were not earthed in the hills last 
year; but the forwardest bine is not always the most productive 
of hops. 1 have known bine that has been kept back first by 
cold weather and then by flea so as not to furnish the poles before 
the middle of June, and then a fair crop grown ; but about the 
beginning of May is the most general time that the l)ine will be 
fit to begin to tie, and then the process of clearing out, &c., 
previous to earthing, as before mentioned, will be about the first 
or second week in June, as the weather and other circumstances 
may have been more or less favourable to the growth of the bine 
since they have been tied ; sometimes, when the aphis blight has 
been severe, they have been completely stopped from growing 
before this time, and in some years (as in 18U2 and 1825 jjarti- 
cularly) never recovered. 
Before I close the subject of tying it will be well to state 
that a plan adopted when any of the heads of the bines are broken 
off by wind or any accident, and the bine too far up to be taken 
down and replaced by another, or when there is no other to 
