Hops

The hops are producing cones. There are 3 varieties cascade, centennial, and unknown. Here we have a cascade cone.

This cascade is in its 2nd year here and it shows. The 1st year I had it in a large container because I wasn't ready to plant it in the ground. This year I had reclaimed enough space and it was pretty clear to me that the plant had outgrown its container.

This unknown variety of hops has shown its gender. A friend who worked at the Mung Dynasty brought me a small pot of what I thought were going to be unknown established pants with rhizomes. Instead they were a small pot of many, many seedlings. Out of that, I repotted some of them into a 9 cell seedling pack. When they got bigger I repotted 6 into small pots. Even later I planted 4 of those into different planters, but kept the 2 still in small pots. Of all of these only this plant which was still in a small pot and stunted for it, has shown any sign of cones.

I'm not a hops expert but I do know that each plant is gender specific. The cone producing gender is female. In most hops farm they only grow female hops. Why these hops have both genders I don't really know, but they do and I intend to keep only the female hops. I might end up discarding the rest of the wild hops if they show signs of being male.

I have tentatively named this female hop either "Mung Duke" or "Duke Mung" because not only did they come from behind the mung dunasty but it also used to be the Duquesne Brewery, where they brewed Duquesne beer, also called "duke."

Who knows, perhaps I have a unique variety. I have tried searching for what these might be without success. Perhaps they will be productive enough to share with other people. I think I will need to keep them for a few years before I know.