KENTISH HOPS.
The country can show few prettier pictures than a hop-garden in a sunny August. The bines twine vigorously round the rustic poles, while the side-shoots hang down in graceful festoons or from pole to pole in tasteful wreaths. Rich clusters of burr hanging from every joint bend down the slender tendrils, until it seems that every moment they must break; and but for tying and stringing, break they often would. But if the graceful plants are picturesque in themselves, it is when viewed as a whole that the hop-garden has its greatest charm. Stretching away in endless succession, until lost in the narrowed distance, is bower upon bower, in which Robin Goodfellow and all his merry crew would be at home. Everywhere there is a wanton luxuriance which seems to belong to nature rather than to industry. The artificial stiffness of the long lines of poles is hidden by their wealth of greenery. In many gardens, too, the hops are still planted in the good old-fashioned style—in groups of three on ‘hills’—festooned in irregular triangles, each of them a verdant arbour. Through the masses of foliage, the sunshine gleams merrily, lighting up the bright yellow catkins, and creating a thousand contrasts of light and shade. The pungent sweetness of the air gives an added charm to the picture, which appeals to the several senses with a rare witchery. We have little need, while we have our hop-gardens, to envy the vineyards of more sunny climes; and it may be a national prejudice, but we take leave to doubt whether in point of the picturesque they do not bear the palm. But the comparison is superfluous.
We, as a nation, are proud of our hop-growing counties. We point triumphantly to the ‘fruit,’ which is, or ought to be, the staple of our national beverage. In one respect, however, the culture of the hop sadly resembles that of the grape. Both are terribly hazardous. Not even the dreaded phylloxera is more devastating than the red spider. The oidium is not more deadly than mould, and both diseases, curiously, require to be treated by sulphuring. Hops, like vines, are subject to plagues of vermin. The hop-fly is a terrible pest, and when, as often happens, it attacks the bines at the same time as mildew, the case is almost hopeless, for sulphuring cannot be employed. According to the popular theory, sulphur, although it revives the blighted bines, makes the fly more vigorous; so that, as the fresh sap rises, it effects such a lodgment in the plant that recovery becomes hopeless. No more dismal spectacle can be imagined than a blighted hop plantation. The blackened bines cling listlessly to the poles. Here and there, a few young but sickly shoots give proof of a vain effort to throw off the pestilence, which seems to threaten the very existence of the parent stem.
Hop-culture, indeed, has manifold dangers in our treacherous climate. In dry seasons, the crop is often so light as hardly to pay for the picking; while, unless there be sunshine and to spare, and, above all, a long spell of warm nights, the burr hardly ripens, and the hops cannot be got in anything like condition. It is not perhaps generally known that although this is a special branch of agriculture, and calls for a high degree of skill and care, there are many varieties of hops which are suited to many different soils, and will thrive under different conditions. It is a common saying in hop counties that one good crop every seven years will pay; so that it may well be asked whether, notwithstanding the risk, a much greater area could not be advantageously put under hops in England? On soils and in situations where the famous ‘Goldings’ or ‘Whitebines’ will not do well, ‘Grapes’ often thrive. Then a kind known by the familiar name of ‘Jones’s’ have long been profitably grown on light and poor land; and on stiff soils, ‘Colegates,’ a late and very hardy variety, have done well. Flemish red bines, too, although an inferior sort, often succeed in bad years, since they are less susceptible to blight. So there is plenty of choice for agriculturists.
There is good reason for believing that hops were known to the Anglo-Saxons, whether or not they introduced them into Britain; for the name is admittedly derived from the Anglo-Saxon hoppan, ‘to climb.’ There is, however, a distich:
Turkey, carps, hoppes, pickard, and beer,
Came into England all in one year—
whence has arisen the notion that the plant was not known in this kingdom until the time of Henry VIII. But although the method of cultivating the plant in vogue in the Low Countries may then have been first introduced into England, as early as the year 1428 Parliament was petitioned against the hop as a ‘wicked weed,’ showing that it was then coming into use. It was not, however, until a century later that it became a general ingredient in the manufacture of malt liquors, and it was long chiefly imported; for the plant was not extensively cultivated with us until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The city of London did not look with favour upon the new industry, for they petitioned the Long Parliament against ‘two nuisances or offensive commodities which were likely to come into great use and esteem; and that was Newcastle coal in regard of their stench, and hops in regard that they would spoyl the taste of drink and endanger the people.’ The petition, however, does not seem to have met with very great success, for both industries soon increased to prodigious proportions. Hops were presently taxed, and became a source of considerable revenue.
Kent was always the chosen hop county. Some seventy thousand acres are now under this crop, and of these, forty thousand are in Kent alone. Farnham is the centre of the hop district of Surrey. Then parts of Hants and Sussex, Essex and Suffolk, Hereford and Worcester, and even so far north as Notts, have long been cropped with hops; and although success has been checkered with failure, the returns as a whole have proved fairly remunerative. The yield is, of course, very variable, ranging from eight to ten hundredweight per acre in a good season, the heaviest crop on record being twenty-five hundredweight, to five and even three or less in a bad one. The prices realised, too, depend so much upon condition and quality that it is only possible to give here the slightest indication. As much as twenty-five pounds per hundredweight has been paid for the first ‘pockets’ on sale in the Borough; but this is, of course, a phenomenal price. Owing to the immense quantities of foreign hops in the market, prices in an ordinary year seldom rule higher, for all but the very finest sorts, than from nine to thirteen pounds per hundredweight. But although hop cultivation is steadily on the increase in England, it by no means keeps pace with the import trade. Every year we import many hundred thousand hundredweight, of which about half comes from the United States, and the remainder from Australia, Belgium, France, Würtemberg, Central Germany, and Holland. Against this we export only a few thousand hundredweight to India and some of the colonies.
From all this, it will be seen that there is room for a considerable increase in the land under hop cultivation in this country. Nor, if the culture of the plant be strictly subordinated to that of other crops, need the risk be prohibitive. Moreover, a variety of uses have lately been introduced for the waste of the crop. Little, for instance, has hitherto been made out of the bines in this country; but within the last few years they have been experimentally converted into ensilage and found to form at once a valuable feeding material and a useful tonic. Other uses have been found for them abroad. Thus, in Sweden, they have long been treated so that they could be woven into a rough kind of cloth. The process was formerly very tedious, consisting chiefly of soaking them in water all the winter; but it has been greatly expedited by treating them successively with alkaline lye and acetic acid, when the fibre is at once ready for bleaching. This use for hopbine has, however, for some unknown reason, never attracted much attention in Great Britain. An English patent was once taken out for using the plant for tanning purposes; but, so far as we know, it has never been very successfully used; and the bine is still to a large extent regarded as a waste product, or at best used as litter.