Can wild hops cure insomnia?

Nowadays, most people are in a sub-healthy state. Although they are not physically ill, their whole body is in a state of sleepiness and fatigue. On the one hand, it is because people lack exercise, and on the other hand, it is because people do not rest well and have poor sleep quality. Nowadays, many people suffer from neurasthenia, difficulty falling asleep and insomnia. There are many plants in nature that can treat this disease, such as wild hops.

Wild hops are a climbing plant that has been used for making wine and as a herbal sedative since Roman times. Wild hops are commonly used to treat insomnia, restlessness and diarrhea. In the past, people also used wild hop pillows to take advantage of the volatile oils during sleep and provide sedation.

Wild hops contains the natural plant sleep-inducing active factor lupulin, and is specially added with a variety of natural precious Chinese herbal medicines such as Gastrodia elata, longan, and Ganoderma lucidum. It has the functions of nourishing yin and qi, improving intelligence and calming the mind, clearing liver fire, removing evil yin, and comprehensively nourishing the internal organs.

Morphological characteristics

Huahubu is a perennial herbaceous vine, 4 to 6 meters tall, with inverted spines. The leaves are opposite, oval in outline, 3-5 deeply lobed, rarely 7-lobed, 5-13 cm long, with pointed apex, cordate base, serrated margins, long petioles, and rough surface; the leaves on the inflorescence branches are smaller and undivided. Dioecious, male inflorescence conical, large; female inflorescence short spike, oval, slightly drooping, with slender stalks, light yellow-green, spherical when fruiting; there are aromatic gland dots at the base of the inner surface of the bracts, which enlarge after flowering. Achenes are oblate and brown.

Distribution

It grows at the bottom of mountain valleys or in sparse thickets at an altitude of 1000-2000m. In China, it is mainly distributed in Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Guizhou and other places.

Cultivation techniques

It likes cool and dry climate, is cold-resistant but not heat-resistant, and the suitable temperature for growth and development is 14-25℃. The suitable temperature for seed germination is 18-22℃, and the frost-free period is about 120 days. Long-day crops are light-loving, and the best annual sunshine hours are between 1700-2600 hours. The soil requirements are not strict, but loam or sandy loam with a deep soil layer (2m), fertile, loose and good aeration is preferred. Soil with neutral or slightly alkaline pH. Slightly drought-resistant, but not water-resistant. The ideal precipitation is 400-500mm. For cultivation technology, it is advisable to choose a place that is sheltered from the wind and facing the sun. Deep tillage is done in the fall of the previous year.

Seedlings are usually propagated by rhizome cuttings. The rhizomes used for cuttings are required to have fresh cortex, 2-3 clusters of buds, no diseases, a thickness of 0.6-1cm, and a length of 10-14cm. Shoot tip culture can also be used to obtain hop plants for cultivation.

Transplanting: bury the materials used for planting in advance at a certain distance of 10 cm underground between March and April in spring. The row spacing is generally 1.5×1.5m, or 1.4×1.6m, with about 4,500 plants planted per hectare; the row spacing for mechanized cultivation is 1.5×3m.

Before planting, you need to set up supports or trellises to guide the branches to grow upward or to grow side branches. Hop racks are generally vertical pole type or high (low) flat rack type. When setting up the frame, erect wooden poles (16-20cm in diameter and 6-7m long) or concrete pillars as a skeleton at a distance of 6-7m in the hop field in advance, pull steel bars longitudinally on the top, and use iron wires to pull lines horizontally to form a high frame (6m) or a low frame (2m), then hang nylon ropes from above and fix the lower ends in the soil with hooks.

During the seedling stage in March or April in spring or October to November in autumn, dig up the root soil to expose the rhizomes for root pruning and cutting, retain 3 to 5 clusters of fresh latent buds, cut off the rest with a sharp knife, and then cover with 3 to 5 cm of loose soil; when most of the new buds have emerged from the soil, dig up the root soil again, select 3 to 5 strong buds from them, and then cover them with soil. When the young shoots extend 0.5-1m out of the ground, the seedlings are thinned out. Select 1-3 branches with the same height for each plant, and remove the rest. If there are missing seedlings, more branches can be left from neighboring plants to supplement the seedlings.

Hops is a fertilizer-loving crop. Generally, before planting, sufficient organic fertilizer, cake fertilizer and superphosphate (2/3 of the annual application amount) should be applied as base fertilizer. Apply seedling fertilizer, branch fertilizer and flower fertilizer during the growth period. Nitrogen fertilizer is mainly used in the early and middle stages of growth, while phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are mainly used in the flowering stage.