My Cascades have started poking out of the ground. It’s kind of late for us down here, and I was worried they wouldn’t even come back at all because of their poor health last year. 3 years of sever drought has taken it’s toll, I even have cacti dying. But they are back and looking good.
I’m about an hour outside of the main hop growing region and mine started breaking ground a few weeks ago.
Nice!
I checked my Cascade last weekend and nothing yet. It won’t be long now though, probably in the next few weeks or so, I should start to see them poking through the ground.
My Cascade already has a couple inches of growth. Magnum & Nugget are just starting to sprout.
Maybe once all the snow melts I’ll be able to tell if they’re sprouting yet. 
All our snow melted over a month ago, the day after it fell.
This is year 2 for my hops. I still have them in containers for now (and probably will for another year or two). I just moved the containers out from under my deck on Monday (had them against the house to protect them from any deep, hard freezes), and put down a thin layer of “mulch” - my spent grains from the oatmeal brown I brewed. Last year they got hit hard by bugs, so I’m hoping the roots were able to store enough energy to get off to a strong start this year.
I have this greenhouse that’s attached to the front of my house. It’s not very large but during the winter it can get to over 90 degrees in there during the day (I know because there’s a fan that turns on at 90 degrees).
I’m curious if I could grow hops year round in there? Another problem would be space to let them climb and grow, but I think I can solve that.
hops are very dependent on day light. you could keep them alive even above ground but I don’t know that you would gain anything from it. they will only produce a harvest when the light/dark balance is correct (hence their dependence on latitude) but they can be above ground perennial. But they MIGHT only flower on new lateral growth (not sure about the new part, sure about the lateral part) in which case keeping the above ground portion alive year round would probably end up takeing resources away from new lateral growth.
As I understand it the hops need the fall and winter cold seasons to absorb nutrients to prepare for the growing season and further develop the root system. I think even with the right temperature the plants will still die back just from the change in number of light hours in the day. I know here in Texas we had a very warm fall and my hops died back and a couple tried to sprout new shoots as late as November but it all died back when it got cold. I suspect if you just kept the plant warm it would keep trying to grow new shoots in the fall and winter and you would never keep strong bines that would produce anything.
Geography. It’s a big place. I liked the latitude point and the sun/darkness balance. I’m in Grand Rapids, MI and while that’s north in the US, it’s actually a tad south of Bavaria’s latitude. I’ve considered growing hops here and lots of folks are. It’s quite the growing industry and I’ve met several folks at beer fests and even bars (Founders) that are marketing their hops. The weather is a bit milder here on the west side of the state as Lake Michigan is a pretty big heat sink; lots of fruit orchards here.
Anyway, it seems to be a good hop growing region, but my particular neighborhood is nothing but huge old growth oak trees. Tons and tons of shade. Hard to even grow grass…lot’s of moss, though. My understanding is the hops need tons of sunlight during the summer. That’s just not my yard…unless I try to grow containers on the roof!
I keep hearing folks talk about how their plants aren’t doing well due to the drought… don’t you folks have plumbing and hoses?!
Last year an employee was going to fix my sprinkler system so my hops would be watered while I was on vacation. He came over, saw my daughter watering plants and decided it didn’t need to work if she was going to water them, but she only did it once and when I got back from a 3 week vacation in July they were pretty much toast. He will be here this weekend and I won’t let him leave until it all works.
The other issue I have is that our water really sucks-our tap water is very hard and seeds won’t even germinate if I use water. And being in our third year of a drought here in the desert, water use for plants is discouraged. I have a water well, but when farmers nearby open their wells my well goes dry pretty fast.