The Great Hop Shortage of 2008 convinced me to take up hop gardening this year. It’s something I’d always wanted to do when I had space, but it took five-dollar-an-ounce hops to give me the real kick in the pants I needed.
I ordered a half-dozen hop rhizomes from The Thyme Garden but, due to the strange weather this Spring, waited until April 19 to put them in the ground.
Some of them took longer than others, but they’re all up and doing pretty well. The varieties I planted, and photos, below the break:
Cascade
Centennial
Magnum
Oh, wait…
Mount Hood
Sterling
And the undisputed champeen of the growth competition, Willamette
They’re doing about as well as I expected, mostly. I’m a bit surprised to see the Sterling outpacing, well, anything, as it was the runt of the litter, and the Magnum looked like it was going to take off a little better than it did. Otherwise, the state of the bines is roughly reflective of the state of the rhizomes as they went into the ground.
Note that the rod in all these photos is around a half inch in diameter.
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