Its been around two months since my hops went into the ground. The Cascade and Mt. Hood are not doing to bad, but the Willamette and U.S. Tettnang are definitely lagging behind. I took a look in "The Hombrewers Garden" to see what my next steps are as the season continues. There was a section on nutrient deficiencies that caught my eye.
Most of my plants have yellow leaves toward the bottom and in some cases like the Tettnang it is starting to climb up the vine. I also feel like the plants growth has slowed down a lot even though you'd think this would be the time for them to shine.
The book suggest for stunted growth and yellow leaves before the end of the season to add nitrogen. Forms of nitrogen are fresh compost, manure, or fertilizers like fish emulsion or blood meal.
For lower leaves that turn yellow and then brown and start to die up the vine that the soil may be lacking magnesium. Epsom salt is a good source of magnesium.
Both of these seem to be my issues. So I did some research on the web to find out how much of the nutrients I would need to add. I decided to go with fish emulsion (which I found at Lowes) and an epsom salt combination as suggested by one forum. I used a water solution of 1 tablespoon fish emulsion fertilizer (per the label) and 1/4 tsp epsom salt per gallon of water and made two gallons (doubled the nutrients). The post said "Magnesium is the first micronutrient that hops crave when the pH of their root environment is too high. If you are only tending a small hop garden, try using fish emulsion with your water to acidify it. This will make magnesium in your soil more available to the plants."
We'll see over the next few weeks if I've made the right call by adding these nutrients. More to come.....
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