On Sunday, Mary and I drove over to the hop yard for a look at how things were going. We arrived too late in the day to take on actual farm chores, so I decided to walk through row by row to check out how our plants are doing - I'll post those results tomorrow. All of the stringing has been done, and what's left to do with this task is to anchor the ropes so the plants can find them and begin climbing. If we'd been there a little earlier, I would have gotten started on this, but as I mentioned we were already into the hottest part of the day, so I postponed that for Monday.
While I was making counts, Mary went around and trained the bines that were ready to the ropes. We have a good number that have found their ropes on their own, and a few others that have put out a long bine or two so they are ready to begin their climb.
A couple of the Fuggles (red flags) and Chinooks (orange), which are shown in these two photos, have already made it up to four feet - I think that is pretty good for just three weeks. It's remarkable how much energy there is in this crop!Now to see how far up the trellis they'll make it before the equinox!
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