March / April 2010

Well not exactly weekly , but will try to keep up again.

We are year 4 - amazing........ NC weather was very strange this winter, ice cold all the way to mid March, with not a single warm day - unheard of around here. In fact our Farmer who was born on the farm and in his 70's now , said it was the worst winter he can remember.

So the hops were still sleeping all the way into March, just the tiniest of green buds, then we had a week of 80 deg weather and they went gang busters. We are now mid April and we have 4ft of growth and have still not even completed winter weeding - we also slept until it got warm.

The Main varieties are all growing strongly, but it is produce or die for Goldings and Willamette this year. Rest all did fine last year.

Experimental varieties have all done well (2nd Year now) and I have 4 new ones from Germ Plasm Laboratories of the USDA.

Irrigation is up and running again, after rebuilding the piping in the well house, we also extended the PVC feed pipe back to the faucet and buried it, so no longer have to run a hosepipe.

Have fertilized with a high Nitrogen feed and will now used Miracle gro again as they are starting to set cones. Growth has been very quick this year and we have had to work most weekends to keep up with weeds and cleaning up bines.