Page 110 - UNESCO_Zatec_2021_A4

Cutting hop poles before driving them into the ground, J. Wara, Žatecko, 1914 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF HOP GROWING
IN THE 19 CENTURY
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Hop cultivation in a hop field also changed substantially in
the 19 century. The traditional form involved treatment
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of the entire surface that was divided into rows each year.
Young hop plants were planted in holes together with
manure in marked places. In older hop fields, the plants
were carefully trimmed. When the hops started growing,
poles were driven in next to each plant, and the best
offshoot was bound to the pole. Then it was watered,
protected from pests, and during growth, continuously
trained all the way to the end of the pole.

Special wooden pyramidal ladders with a supporting leg
were used for this. If the wind knocked down poles, they
were erected again.

At harvesting time, the plant was cut using a knife, about
1 m from the ground, and the pole was pulled out from
the ground by a special heaver, a hook, together with
the reeled majority of the hop plant. The hop bines were
2. Description smaller parts as they lay on the poles, and these were
picked either in the hop field or sometimes were cut into

bound into small sheaves and taken into barns where the
picking took place.

During the hop picking in the hop fields, the poles,
together with the reeled hops, were taken down to
prepared constructions placed at the edge of a hop
110 field. Supports were gradually leaned against each
other until they formed a one-sided wall, and the hop-
pickers would sit below this wall. The pickers pulled the
hop bines off the poles and picked hop cones putting

Work on an individual pole hop field during the growth of hops,
J. Wara, Žatecko, 1914