Humulus lupulus
Origin: Poland
Improvement status: Cultivated
Seeds per packet: ~60
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
Hops is a well-known word, but the plant itself is quite foreign to most people. While it's most famous for flavoring beer — used for bittering, foaming, and as a preserving agent — it is also a perennial vegetable (the tasty spring shoots can be collected like slender little asparagus shoots) and a well-known medicinal plant, used especially as a sleep aid, for hot flashes, and against cardiovascular disease and depression. The seeds (similar to their close cousin hemp's seeds) are highly nutritious. The distinctive flavor of hops flower cones is starting to show up in commercial products beyond beer too, including tea, kombucha, non-alcoholic beverages, even ice cream and candy!
Hops is an easy plant to grow, but it definitely wants to climb high. Commercial plantings use trellises that are about 18 feet tall. Hops does not have tendrils like beans, so it is not technically a vine but rather a "bine", and it uses stiff hair-like structures along its stem to help bind it to whatever its trying to climb. While most hops plants grown are clones of normally seed-producing female plants, when grown in the absence of male plants they don't produce seeds, only the sought-after flowers. By growing hops from seed, you will no doubt grow both male and female plants, so you can continue breeding new varieties — including from cloned named varieties you might already be growing, which only need a pollinator to start producing seeds.
We're really excited to add these hops seeds to our catalog, and grateful to the good folks at Sheffield's Seeds in Locke, NY, for importing these seeds from Poland.
GROWING TIPS: Cold-moist stratify seeds for 30 days before planting. Grow in full sun and provide something for the hops to climb. Hardy to Zone 4.
