It's Growing!!

For those of you who actively follow my blog you'll know that last year a combo of squirrels and my lack of knowing how to plant hops correctly yielded in me killing off about 5 plants. This year Ted offered me up another 2 plants to try to kill grow. This spring Minnesota had a very odd weather pattern. It became extremely warm (70's) very early, then dropped off in temp again. This made trying to time the planting of the hops a bit hard for me. On one side I had people like Ted and Paul saying plant them. On the other side I had Erin saying wait. Due to some traveling plans I decided to wait. Once again I planted the hops in planters so that I could move the plants if I wanted to.

Much like last year I had the damn squirrels digging up my plants again. I guess they like to hide nuts in the planters. The Chinook plant didn't make it. The Cascade plant survived the first few attacks before I finally figured out how to stop them. I found a tighter opening chicken wire that I wrapped over the top of the planter. That managed to stop the digging.

After about a week of watering and a relocation of the planter the plant managed to hit the wire protection around it. I changed the wire setup and watched in anticipation of yet another round of attacks. Lucky for me there was nothing after 3 days. Yesterday I noticed that the plant was now starting to look for something to grow on. It's time to run the rope.

Most first year plants don't produce many cones, if any. Hopefully I'll get something out of this little guy. I'm not expecting a lot but it would be fun. Next year should be a lot more interesting. I'll keep you updated with pictures as time goes on.

Prost!

-Ryan