Sunday, April 17, 2011

Hops - 2011 - All 4 Varieties Showing Life

All 4 varieties are now showing signs of life. The Cascade and Willamette that I purchased from my Local Home Brew Shop (LHBS) were much slower to break ground than the other two varieties (Mt Hood and US Tettnang) that were clipping from a friend. I'd expect the two purchased rhizomes to not do as well as the other "free" ones this first season. We'll see.

Both the Cascade and Willamette only have 2-3 shoots showing. This is the best picture of the Willamette.



The Cascade is still very brown/purple and really tough to pick out (no picture posted)

Here are some updated pictures of the Mt. Hood......


......and the US Tettnang starting to climb on the tomato cage I have in place.


To keep the dog and kids out, I set up some rabbit guard to protect the plants in a quater-circle shape. I have this same design mirrored on the other side of the swing.


To try to keep the plant spaced around 5 feet apart, I have them situated at the far corner of the fence and then the front pole of the swing. That angles gives me the distance I need. But in the future I'll likely have to be diligent about keeping the roots cut so they don't tangle each other underground.


3 comments:

  1. Awesome!

    I've got all 5 of my varieties showing life. The Pride of Ringwoods are the last to show up, but I finally saw some sprouts from them. My Cascades and Zeus hops are doing insanely well. Centennials are trailing behind a little, but I only just planted them outside on Tuesday (they were planted indoors last season because I didn't have a spot for them).

    Hope yours take off!

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  2. I've had mine outside the entire time. Decided to just take the risk and not even bother putting them in pots.

    So far so good though the ones that came sproutless (Cascade & Willamette) are the lowest advance.

    Hopefully yours continue to do good!

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  3. Good luck to both of you. I planted my rhizomes on Friday so I'm just itching to see something come up out of the ground. They all had decent sized sprouts on them before I planted them so it'll be interesting to see how long it takes them to realize it's go-time.

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