This year’s hops are starting to poke their heads up!
Awwwww yeaaahhhh!
Bring Spring!
You realize now that you have said something, you’ll get a foot of snow and there will be shrinkage. 
AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!! Shrinkage! 
I had to go outside and check. Nothing yet here. March is the snowiest month for Denver, CO. It is raining today…Sigh…Winter is putting up a fight and Spring is putting up a fight…I hope spring wins.
I checked mine
Still snow on them
But its melting FAST , hit 60 today!!!
Mine are about 3" tall. Except of course for the new varieties that I’m expecting to arrive any day now ;D
Snow has melted and they are just starting to poke their heads up…ever so slightly. 8)
Nothing here as of yesterday, still have snow but its melting. I uncovered two plants about a week ago so the ground around them would thaw. I’m not sure any of them will come up since I transplanted them from Ohio to here in September. :-\ I may have to start over.
Denny, do you find it easy to harvest your hops with them growing on woven wire fence? I haven’t put up poles, cable or anything yet because I haven’t decided what type of trellis etc. that I want to use. Last year I used cables horizontally at about 10 feet with a single hemp rope drop line for each mound of plants to climb. It worked okay but stretching a couple of sections of woven wire would be easy to do and give the plants support for lower lateral spread (making a nice privacy screen from the road) if I put a couple of extra support poles in the middle.
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s not too bad. Your neck and arms get kinda tired after an hour or so, but after that amount of time I’ve picked all that will fit into my food dehydrator, anyway. I usually pick daily for about a week or so, so it’s not too bad.
Safer than getting up on a ladder!
Hops work great for privacy screening, and if they are limited by height, the lateral branches really spread and fill in space.
Cool, I think I’ll start hunting for some used fencing. If I find enough I’ll put two rows up so the height is about 10 feet or so… assuming my hops grow. :-\
Grow babies, grow! I better go check mine.
My Cascades popped up this past weekend, still waiting for the Nuggets and Goldings.
Most of my hops are trellised, but I have some on a chain link fence and they produce at least as well as the trellised ones. It’s a lot easier to harvest too.
I’m jealous. I’ll put some in soon enough I guess…
Denny, do you have any photos of your hops growing on this system? I am trying to rethink my hopyard this year as it has been rather unmanageable. http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=1836.0
Thanks.
My Fuggles have gone absolutely nuts this year! Bigger than the Cascade right now! I guess they like this wet, miserable weather - they are English, after all.
Thanks Denny.
Does that get so heavy it brings the fence down? Do you do any trimming? Does it excarbate pest disease problems?
Sorry for all the questions. Just trying to figure this out.
Thanks! ;D
Nope to all of those. Once I get the bines established on the fence, I don’t do anything but water.