Hop Cultivation. 
229 
earth upon the stock is moved with an ordinary three-pronged hoe. 
All the fibrous growth is cut off close to the ground with a 
peculiar knife (fig. 1), having a thin, sharp, hooked blade, and fine 
earth is drawn over the cut stocks with a little hoe (fig. 2), and they 
are neatly ringed round. It is well not to “ dress ” hop plants 
too early, as if the shoots or bines are forward, they are exposed 
to the action of spring frosts which will either cut them up, or 
blacken and spoil them, or make them “ sticky,” unkindly, and 
more liable to blight and mildew. 1 The French vine cultivators 
dread the influences of white frosts upon the young and tender 
shoots of the vines, which are most pernicious, especially if the 
sun shine on them while they are covered with dew. On the other 
hand, if the plants are dressed very late, and cold dry weather 
come in May, as is sometimes the case, the bines get behind and 
Fig. 1.— Dressing Kuifc. 
Fig. 2.— Hoe. 
cannot make up for lost time. But most planters now hold that 
moderately late is better than too early dressing. 
Care must be taken in dressing not to cut the stocks too 
low, thus getting them too much below the ground level, nor too 
high, so that they are much above it. The dressing knife 
should be kept very sharp to give a clean cut, as in all pruning. 
Reynolde Scot says with regard to dressing : — 
You must, at the first time of cutting and dressing, with a sharpe knife 
cut away all such rootes and sprynges as grewe the year before out of your 
settes within one inch of the same. Every yeare after you must cut them 
as close as you can to the olde rootes even as you see au osyer-bed cut. 
He adds : — 
At what time soeur you pull downe your hylles cut out your rootes 
before the end of March, or the beginning of April, and then remember the 
wynde . 2 
1 In the terribly mouldy year 1880, it was noticed that hop plants which 
had been dressed exceptionally late escaped mould to a considerable extent, 
and planters who adopted this late dressing were convinced that it was the 
cause of their comparative immunity from mould. 
2 The Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden. By Keynolde Scot, 1576, 
p. 41. 
