Why hops growers need to stay green and clean

By Denise Méthé

When it comes to branding, plants have the cleanest, most wholesome image of any living thing.

​Mention words like gardening, growing, nurturing, and farming and people immediately think clean, green, wholesome, and environmentally wonderful.

The reality is that growing beautiful, clean plants is no easy task. For every seed you put in the ground, there are pests and predatory diseases waiting to pounce on it and keep it from growing up to be strong and healthy.

No plant is more susceptible to the challenges of the natural environment than hops.

At Northeast Plants Inc. in New Brunswick, growing healthy hops is essential since our business depends on selling our plants to commercial growers across Canada and the United States.

We take exceptional care of our plants, propagating them using tissue culture and transferring them to mycorrhizae enriched soilless sterile potting mix in a temperature and humidity controlled greenhouse environment.

Our staff is required to adhere to strict sanitation protocols in both our laboratory and our greenhouses. Even when people ask and we want to oblige, we can’t have them going into our facilities or touching our plants.

We do not have a hops yard surrounding our greenhouse and we do not grow any other kinds of plants in our greenhouses. As soon as you start to commingle plants, there is a chance for diseases or pests to be transferred through the air or the careless use of a tool.

Growing plants is more about cutting down your risk factors than almost anything else. Every step you deviate from the science of horticulture you raise your risk that something bad could happen to hurt your plants.

In the time we have been in the hops production business, we have heard of growers who took great care to obtain original clean plants, but then start taking cuttings off the offspring of the mother plant. When that happens, there is an increased risk of disease. 

We know that growing hops plants using tissue culture in our sterile environment as we do is the only process we can really trust to produce the quality and amount of clean plants our clients require.

Plants need to be inspected regularly, no matter how careful the procedures that exist.

These are sobering words for home growers of hops who use traditional methods and merely want to grow a small supply to support their home-brewing industries. Overall there are about 30 diseases or conditions that can cripple your hops production, and of those about one third can be deadly.

Just 13 years ago, hops production around the world was impacted by the Hops Stunt Viroid, a pathogen that reduced hop yield by up to 60 percent. It was detected in the United States in 2004, and since then, it has surfaced throughout North America, Europe and even Slovenia.

Its origin has since been traced to an on-farm propagation of two diseased plants, both from different hop strains, and the result was devastating as it spread.

Disease spread through contamination in mechanical harvesting and insects can threaten yields as well as the contaminated plants.

When you consider all of these risks, it is easier to understand why we grow all our hops in our environmentally controlled greenhouses with strict sanitation protocols.

Denise Méthé and her husband Robert own and operate Northeast Plants Inc., supplier of healthy, clean hops plants to commercial growers across Canada and the United States. Based in New Brunswick in eastern Canada, they can be reached by calling 506-856-0049 or emailing [email protected]. Learn more about varieties sold at www.northeastplants.ca.