Just an update to my hops gardening for April 30th 2012. My cascade hops rhizome has produced one shoot so far and it is growing FAST. within 3 days time it has gone from just barely breaking the surface to almost 2 inches tall.  This one should be a fast grower! I can’t wait til I can harvest some Cascade hops off this plant. If I get a couple ounces of dried Cascade hops it’ll go nicely in a Harvest ale at the end of the growing season.

The Galena hops rhizome had me a little worried at first. It was taking it’s sweet time sending a shoot up to break the surface. However once it did it sent not one, not two but THREE shoots up. Hopefully this one will grow quickly as well. It needs to catch up to the rest of the hops. Galena normally has a fairly strong citrus aroma and I love using it for dry hopping my IPA. This along with the Cascade will make an awesome Harvest ale in early Fall.

The Ultra (decided to stop calling them Ultra/Crystal and just claim them to be Ultra until I’m told otherwise) have been on a growth spurt. Two out of the four bines reached 18-19 inches in length and then fell over onto the support line and wrapped themselves. I had always read that you had to train them to the string because they wouldn’t wrap naturally. These are proving that to be wrong! That’s ok by me, maybe they’re just smart hops and will make the worlds first smart beer!

The remaining Ultra hop bine is growing a bit slower but still growing at a rate of about 1.5-2 inches a day. It should be on the string within the next couple days. At least I hope it is since I’ll be going camping for a few days at the end of the week and I would like it on the string by then.  Right now it’s about 10.5 inches tall and I just gave them all a good  feeding yesterday of Miracle-Gro.

There you go, my update for the end of April. I’ll take more pics and do another update early next week after I come back from camping.

Prost!
MM