Sub-Soiling Between Two Posts…Deep Thoughts

The time had come to begin preparing the large hopyard for round 2 of its existence, this time with better-prepared soils and hills. We (I) took out the remaining two hills in 2022 after we’d given up on the three initial hills about four years ago. They just never took and to ensure all five hills were on the same schedule for maturity, it was time to start from scratch.

Long story short, when we purchased the hop starts for the large yard, there was some confusion about when they were to be sent. All the poles and cabling had been put in place the Winter before, however, we hadn’t prepped the hills themselves yet. Suddenly we found 400+ plants on the way from the grower in Michigan and panic ensued. They sat in their flats for two weeks and were watered while we worked on getting the beds ready.

Well, mistakes were made in the rush and even after we transplanted them, two of the five rows lasted about a year, one lasted another year beyond that and the final two rows could’ve made it, but again, it was determined to start from scratch. After tilling under all the rows in 2022, we began amending and subsoiling the rows to prep the soil health and structure-wise. As we’ve mentioned, there’s a lot of clay in our soils so getting these little fellas started in more nutrient-dense, less compacted hills was key!

There was one small issue…with the posts already in place, fitting the tractor back in there to start working the soil wasn’t going to be straightforward. To subsoil, I’d need to remove the bucket and go section by section, between the poles in a row in one direction, then turn around and come back in the other direction to completely get the sections completely prepped.

Each section between poles is about 36′ and I can only do 1/2 of that when going one direction given the size of the tractor, with the subsoiling happening behind the tractor itself. To do the math:

• 8 sections per row
• 3 passes in one direction with the subsoiler (middle, left side of hill, right side of hill)
• Now up to 24, time to turn around
• 3 passes in the other direction with the subsoiler (middle, left side of hill, right side of hill)
• 8 sections per row
• Now up to 48 passes
• Four more rows to complete
• Total 240 (48 passes * 5 rows)

Thus the Austin Powers “3-point turn” reference in the featured image 😉 Also, just a great movie…ok to just mention it at random.

And this was just the subsoiling, we’ll need to till the beds and most likely, that will happen with the walk-behind tiller unless we can find a 3pt PTO tiller to rent. The beds will then have the composted horse manure added, tilled again, and possibly another set of passes with the subsoiler, then they’ll need to be hilled either by hand or if we can modify a plow share we have. And that’s the prep, this obviously doesn’t include planting the new transplants. Long story short, we have a ways to go. But this time, they’ll have the home they deserve.

In the small yard, a much easier, more pleasant, and satisfying experience: flame weeding! The first set of hops that appear are referred to as “bull shoots”. They can be identified by their color (tend to be purple vs green), much scalier than the hop shoots that will follow, and they’re mostly hollow. Not the ones we want to take the time to train to the coir when the time comes. So we have in recent years either cut them back to the ground or in the last two years, flame-weeded them along with the initial flush of weeds. It’s an easy enough job, but it’s time-consuming so we’re noodling a way to add multiple torches to a rod that will pass over the entire hill from side to side and mounted under our “baby” Bolens tractor as it has a creeper gear, extending to the side out over the hills.

Now, I’d attempted to start the hand tilling on day 2, however, the carburetor on the TroyBilt had other plans. I opened it up twice to clean it and did get it running for the walk up to the large hopyard, but as I started the first row, it decided it had had enough. It was running really rough and inconsistently so I took it back down to the barn, opened it up again and…one of the bolts holding the bowl to the body sheared off and that was the end of that. New carb on the way. We’ve also posted in a variety of Farm-related forums to see if we might be able to rent or lease a 3pt tiller for the IH as it would save a ton of time and probably do a much better job getting a deeper till.

And so with time running out on day two, I’d helped around the yard cleaning up a ton of debris from over Winter. In addition to the tilling (hand or otherwise) for the next trip up, there will be cables to tighten, the “siege tower” needs some planks replaced, and there’s a variety of other small tasks to work on like prepping the sprayer.

So far <knock on wood>, I think we’re on track…for now 😉