2013 Willamette Hop Log

I'm creating this post to keep track of my first year hop progress. I bout 2 Willamette rhizomes from morebeer.com and got them in the ground the 2nd week in April.

I live in southern Indiana and the weather was finally warm enough to get them in the ground. I dug a hole 1ft dia. x 8in. deep and replaced the dirt with a good organic top soil and added some 8-10-8 fertilizer and planted both rhizomes together. I put a layer of mulch from my landscaping to help with evaporation.

I came home only to find half of my dirt mound dug out. The neighbor cats decided to do some fertilizing . That happened 3 times and one time, I noticed part of my rhizomes were showing!

I made a chicken wire cage for it and cleaned all the cat dookie and they haven't messed with it since.

I continued to regularly water the mound lightly about twice a day and finally had a shoot come up May 6th! I was worried that the cat deal ruined them.

I'll post pics as the progress goes on but here are pics of may 10 and may 15. Left is the 10th

10 May 3013



15 May 2013



Those grass clippings are from me mowing next to the mound and not there for any significant reason hah.

21 May 2013 just trained 2 nights before



I plan on digging up the crown next spring and replanting in a spot where they will get sunlight all day. Right now, its only getting about 3 hrs of sun :/

28 May and they doubled in size since last pic! They are still only about 1ft but that's a big jump in the last 7 days. I tied a piece of white string above the tip marking the growth on the 21st and u can barely see it in this pic.



I noticed some small laterals forming so hopefully they feel like producing some cones this season i'll get some close-ups tomorrow if I remember.

How many bines do you have growing out of the ground?

Only one came up.. I'm not sure why only one but I'm hoping for more but I may not get any more this year :/

I have a Centennial growing and it only has one. I do see bines coming out of the first and second leaf node, but from what I read on the internet those are considered side arms. I also wonder if it is because I didn't bury the rhizome deep enough. Who knows? I am a first year hop grower so I am not that experienced.

That's exactly how mine is. Those side arms are about 3 or so inches long. It's really starting to take off, growing an average 2in a day and is about 3ft overall.



4 June 2013


I have been tying a knot of white string on the twine every Tuesday and you can see how more vigorous its gotten the last 2 weeks. Last week it grew twice as fast as the week before.

You can see the small new leaves on the bottom from the side arms. Hopefully we get a bonus little harvest from them!

So its been a few weeks since I posted. Here is a pic from June 12



I left for vacation that following Friday and here's what I came home to. The pic is 2 weeks from the above pic and is about shoulder high now.



The side arms near the bottom are about 1ft long and I'm hoping they feel like producing some cones!

Here is a close-up of the bottom side arms.

They reached the top over the weekend and I tried training the bine horizontally but the clothes line was way too smooth to grip.

I took the same string and wrapped it around the line for about 10'. Wishful thinking hah.

2 July 2013

I checked the bines this morning and I saw some spurs! I'm getting pretty pumped about this year's harvest. Hopefully have enough for a flavor and aroma addition.

10 July 2013

Well its been a couple weeks and the spurs have turned into some nice looking cones. I counted around 35 or so. That's not a whole lot, but more than I had last year!

The side arms are at the the top of the chicken wire cage and are about a foot over the top. They don't have any spurs yet and I'm not sure they will produce any.

31 July 2013

Harvested about 2/3 of the total cones yesterday and got them drying on a screen from the door propped between two chairs with a fan blowing up thru them. Its a small harvest but didn't expect much from the first year.

My Willamette hops broke ground today! Kicking off the 2014 growing season.


1 April 2014

A week later and there's 20 chutes and they are wanting to take off! Hopefully

8 April 2014

We had some nice warm and sunny weather the last week and they took off like mad. The weather yesterday took a turn back to winter but shld start warming back up soon.

15 April 2014

Well I snipped most of the bines in order to avoid training bull shoots. I left the shortest ones and gonna pick a few from that litter.

17 April 2014

Im going to trim and train 4 bines here before too long. 2 for each string.

22 April 2014

I didnt have a chance to post last week so here's April 29 and May 6 respectively.

We have been gettin some strong storms the past few days and some hail did a number to some leaves as well as breaking off the whole tip of the longest right bine!

Im assuming that a new bine will come out of the last node and become the primary for that one?

The others seem ok snd the leaves are in decent shape.

Here is a pic of the broken bine with sprouting coming out of the last node as well as the rest of the growth and I think some sidearms are starting to poke out. Looking way ahead of last year (first year).

13 May 2014

A friend at work started some Tettnanger hops last year about the same time I did mine.

He took some of his clipped bines from a few weeks ago and started some roots in bottles of water. Today he gave me 2 of them so I planted both together in a 5 gal bucket.

I drilled four 7/16 holes near the bottom for drainage and put a couple inches of landscaping rock in the bottom and filled with potting soil and mixed in some bone and blood meal.

My plan is to grow these in a bucket this year and transplant in the ground next year. Thats Otto checking out our new brewery addition.

14 May 2014

The warmer temps have really helped with the growth.

20 May 2014

Btw.. I forgot to mention on this thread that a hail storm a few weeks ago broke off the end of my right longest bine

Not long after that, a few bines popped out of the node closest to the break with some interesting node grouping.

Here's the 2 new bines under the damage. Pic from a few days before above pic

I noticed the start of some small spurs today

Update on spur growth

28 May 2014

3 June

Im getting some nice clusters of spurs and getting at least 6in of growth per day.

Update 10 June
Horizontal growth is still coming along and more and more sidearms with spurs are popping up.

The cutting I put in the ground is doing well and I plan on digging it up this fall and transplanting it to the future trellis spot.

Here lately the bottom leaves have been looking funky. I have been trimming them off but I was wondering off someone cld help? I'm watering about 1/2 to 3/4 gallon every other day when it's not raining and added miracle grow last week but haven't noticed much with leave color.

20 June
The bottom leaves are still growing and it seems to be creeping up to the other leaves. The spurs are starting to form into hops.

So it's been awhile since my last post but not much has happened except for hop growth. I'm getting some great looking cones and clusters.

22 July

Dang. Willamette gave you some good cones. I only got about 0.2 Oz dry from mine last year. This year I may get an ounce. Must not like the soil or Temps. All my other plants are like yours. Good work!

Thanks!

I tested my soil a few weeks ago with the color chart kit and I was getting between 6.0 - 6.5 ph. I don't know about all the other numbers thought lol.

The weather has really been cooperating this year and had really helped the growing season here in southern Indiana.

MathiasMicrobrew said:

Thanks!

I tested my soil a few weeks ago with the color chart kit and I was getting between 6.0 - 6.5 ph. I don't know about all the other numbers thought lol.

The weather has really been cooperating this year and had really helped the growing season here in southern Indiana.

Click to expand...

Northern IL had way more rain than usual early, coupled with unseasonably cool weather. I was hoping for a long stint in the high 80s and 90s and didn't get it. I have 3 of my four plants, all first years, who have grown some male parts, and I suspect all the rain is the reason. We even had ground swell this year that shifted the sand underneath the above ground pool. Sadly, because of Willy's woeful underperformance, she was gifted to my mother. She reports that it's growing like a weed but doesn't have cones yet.

Nugget however loves this weather. One bine is approaching 40 feet in growth. How have yours fared growing horizontally over clothesline? Do you find you have to train daily?

Well you can't pick the weather which sucks. But yes I would have to train about every day cause there was about 7in on average that would try growing vertical. They have done very good growing horizontal.