178 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
HOP CULTURE DESCRIBE!), 
We spent a few days in July among the hop- 
growers of Otsego county, and improved the op¬ 
portunity to observe their methods of cultivation, 
and to learn what improvements our farmers had 
made in growing a crop so famous in England. 
It is confined to a few localities in this country, 
and outside of these very limited districts, little 
is known of hop culture. The few who are 
engaged in it find it profitable, and some have 
made themselves independent in a few years. 
The Hop (Humulus lupulus) is put by Linnaeus 
in his class of Diecia, and in the order pentan- 
dna. The staminate flowers aie without corol, 
and have a five-leaved calyx, and the anthers 
have two pores at the end. The pistillate flow¬ 
ers upon the female plant have a one-leaved ca¬ 
lyx, entire, oblique, and spreading. There is one 
seed within the leaf-like calyx. This description 
of the male and female plants is a matter of 
practical importance, as the male plants should 
only bear a small proportion to the female in a 
well-planted hop-yard. 
The use of hops in the manufacture of beer is 
of comparatively recent origin, it being used in 
Flanders about 1500, whence it was introduced 
into England about 1625. Its introduction was 
Totemporaneous with the Reformation, and some 
poet who eschewed hop flavor and Puritanism 
alike, gave vent to his antipathy in the well- 
known doggerel: 
“ Hops, heresy, pickerel and beer 
Were brought into England in one year.” 
It now occupies a conspicuous place in the 
husbandry of England, and is a profitable crop. 
The counties where it most flourishes are Kent, 
Sussex, Surrey, Worcester and Essex, and in 
these it is confined to particular localities. The 
number of acres in hops in 1820 was a little over 
fifty thousand. Twenty years later it was but 
fifty-two thousand, showing that there is but 
little increase in the extent of land used lor this 
crop. The value of hops raised in England has 
sometimes reached the sum of fifteen millions of 
dollars annually. In this country the cultivation 
of hops is steadily on the increase. 
PREPARATION OP SOIL. 
The hop plant delights in a rich loam or calca¬ 
reous sand, and lands of this character, lying 
upon lime-rock, are selected in England for 
the hop yards. Nearly all the farms that we 
visited in the north part of Otsego county have a 
surface soil of rich clayey loam, and the rock 
where it crops out, which is seldom, is either 
lime-rock or slate, and the slate is often very 
soft, or in a state of decomposition. The best 
lands upon the farm are usually selected for the 
hop-yard, and the ground is plowed a foot or 
more deep, and highly manured. The rule for 
manuring, as we learned from one of the best 
hop growers, was, “ the more manure the better.” 
Indeed, so general is the conviction of this ne¬ 
cessity for the crop, that no skillful farmer at¬ 
tempts it without manure, and the tendency is to 
rob every other field to enrich the hop-yard. 
After thorough plowing, manuring and harrowing, 
* the field is ready for the 
PLANTING OP THE ROOTS. 
These are obtained from yards that have been 
several years under cultivation. The plant has 
an annual stem, but a perennial root, and is con¬ 
tinually throwing up suckers, which have to be 
removed every season from the old vine, in order 
to throw the strength of the vines into the flow¬ 
ers. Sometimes the cuttings of the old stumps, 
which are removed every Spring, are buried, to 
furnish new plants, but the principal reliance is 
upon suckers that come up spontaneously near 
the old vine. These afford a considerable source 
of profit, when there is a demand for them. 
They are sold in some neighborhoods, when the 
hop fever is on, as high as three dollars a bushel, 
but the general price is from a quarter to three- 
quarters of a dollar a bushel. It takes four or 
five bushels to plant an acre. The distance at 
wlu. Ii the hills are put varies somewhat with 
different cultivators. The strong temptation of 
those who are inexperienced in the business is 
to put them within five or six feet. But those 
more skilled, rarely put them nearer than seven 
feet, in rows running each way, and this we 
found the prevailing rule in the yards that we 
visited. This makes about seven hundred hills 
to the acre. In planting, regard must be had to 
the sex of the plants. The rule is, to put one 
male plant in every tenth lull in every tenth row, 
making one staminate to ninety-nine pistillate 
plants. Without the staminate plants, there will 
be hops, but there is much less pollen upon them, 
and the quality is considered inferior. No seeds 
will be formed ro produce young plants, in case 
the cultivator wishes to raise his stock from the 
seed. 
THE POLES. 
No inconsiderable part of the capital required 
for a hop-yard is expended upon the poles. 
Those must used in this region are of cedar and 
spruce, and we were informed came from Can¬ 
ada. They cost about twelve cents each on the 
canal at Fort Plain, whence they are carted some 
twenty or thirty miles to-the farms. The cost 
delivered is not far from fourteen dollars a hun¬ 
dred, making the outfit of poles for an acre about 
two hundred dollars. They will last eight or ten 
years, according to the care taken of them during 
the winter season. They are from twelve to 
twenty feet long, and two are used for each hill, 
inclining from each other, so that the poles, when 
draped with the vines, form a succession of ver¬ 
dant arches. They are set in this way to admit 
the air and sunlight more perfectly among the 
vines. When a hill shows unusual strength, a 
third pole is sometimes set, inclining at right 
angles to those already set. 
CULTIVATION. 
This is substantially like that of the corn crop, 
consisting of plowing, cultivating and hoeing the 
whole space between the rows. They have a 
plow that cuts a very shallow furrow near to the 
hills, so that the roots may not be injured near 
the crowns of the plants. In the middle of the 
spaces between the rows, the plow goes down 
ten or more inches. The best hop-growers are 
scrupulously neat about their yards, tilling tho¬ 
roughly, and not suffering the weeds to grow. In 
one of the yards we visited, nothing was visible 
but hops, save a solitary daisy that the hoe had 
accidentally missed. 
The hop requires a good deal of manure, and it 
is customary to give the land a liberal dressing 
every year, and plow it in. No crop pays better 
for manure than this, and those gentlemen who 
succeed best are found to make the largest out¬ 
lays for fertilizers. It delights in manures of an 
oily nature, and fish are used in England with the 
best results. Old woolen rags and hair are also 
excellent manures. But the main reliance here 
is stable manure, with top dressings of lime, 
plaster and ashes. Plaster is used to good advan¬ 
tage. 
PICKING. 
This is one of the most expensive and labori¬ 
ous parts of hop-growing. It cannot be done rea¬ 
sonably with the ordinary working force of the 
farm, and the grower has to employ extra help 
when all his neighbors are as much in want of 
labor as himself. Females procured from the 
neighboring villages and cities are usually en 
gaged for this purpose, and the wages are about 
two dollars and a half a week, and board. 
The time when the crop may be harvested to 
the best advantage is very short. If the vines 
are cut too early, they bleed, and are injured for 
the next year’s crop : if a little too late, the hops 
are injured by the frost. They should not be cut 
until the sap is done circulating, and the flowers 
are matured. Careful observers have noticed that 
a week’s difference in the time of cutting the 
vines very sensibly affects the yield the following 
year. In picking, the poles are taken up and put 
lengthwise of the bin, which is some ten feet 
long by four wide, and is divided into four apartr 
ments. Four pickers then strip off the flowers 
into the bins, whence they are put into sacks, 
and carried to the kiln for drying. 
THE KILN 
for drying is a very essential part of the business, 
as the value of the crop depends essentially upon 
thorough curing. The kiln which we visited is 
one of the best of its kind, and cost about seven 
hundred dollars. It is made of cobble stones 
and mortar, in circular form, the walls about two 
feet thick, and running up about sixteen feet 
high. The stone wall is surmounted by a coni¬ 
cal roof with rafters twenty-two feet long. The 
point of the cone is left open, and protected by 
a revolving hood, like the smoke-jack often seen 
upon the top of a chimney. The apartment 
within the walls is about twenty-two feet in di¬ 
ameter, and is cut into two stories. On the first 
floor is the heating apparatus, consisting of a 
large box stove, and about a hundred feet of pipe 
winding around the walls of the kiln, so as to dis¬ 
tribute the heat uniformly in all parts of the 
building. The floor above is made of slats two 
inches by one, and set edgewise about two 
inches apart, and covered with a thin cotton 
cloth or strainer, so as to hold the hops, and yet 
admit of a free passage of the heated air. On 
this perforated floor the hops are laid to the 
depth of two feet, and are subjected to the heated 
air for about twenty-four hours. They are then 
removed to the adjoining storage room, where 
they remain two or three weeks, and are packed 
and pressed in bales. 
The crop is usually bought up by speculators 
the Spring before it is harvested, the farmer 
agreeing to deliver at a given place and time his 
whole crop, at a specified price. The speculator 
sometimes pays a part of this price down, in 
order to secure the bargain. If hops rise, he 
sometimes makes a fortune in a single season. 
If they fall, he is ruined. This is a favorite crop 
for speculation, not only among residents in the 
hop districts, but in the city. A single house in 
this city sunk two hundred thousand dollars in 
this operation last year. 
As to the tendency of the crop upon other farm 
interests, we found the opinions of intelligent 
men much divided. All agree that for a time the 
crop is profitable, and nothing brings so large re¬ 
turns in money. Others claim that it leads a 
farmer to neglect everything else, and if he 
makes money by it, he is certain to ruin his farm. 
Judging from the appearance of the farms in the 
towns that we visited, there is a foundation for 
this latter opinion. The hop vines are eating up 
the land, and reducing the capacity of the soil to 
produce remunerative crops of corn, potatoes, 
oats, grass and hay, to which this region is so ad¬ 
mirably adapted. We trust the day is not far dis¬ 
tant when a wiser husbandry will prevail, when 
the landholder will feel that he is identified with 
his homestead, and that he has no right to enrich 
himself at the expense of his soil. 
