Well, back in March I had ordered and received ten hop rhizomes to plant. I ordered 5 cascades and 5 sterlings, I was going to plant them in the back yard in April once the weather broke and by the end of this month I would be picking hops, yeah well that just didn't work out.
The hop rhizomes arrived about mid-March while I was in the midst of building the chicken coop. I was so focused on getting that coop built and the run set that it was all I could see in front of me, so the packages of hops went into the refrigerator. Then like most things in my fridge, if it isn't yogurt for A Bird, cheese sticks for L Bird, or an icy cold delicious beer for me, it gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until it begins growing something that could possibly take over and eat the fridge itself.
So that's what happened, until L Bird got it in her head to clean out the fridge. In her cleaning the packages of hops got moved to the front and in the side door compartment, right next to the Coke, so I had to see them. I pulled them out and they all looked in pretty decent shape for spending 4 1/2 months in the cold unknown of the back of the fridge.
With that I grabbed my post hole digger and went out to the back yard and planted them. I gently tucked each one into its nice, moist, (Ha ha, I said moist), bed and covered them up. I watered them, said a little prayer that they would grow and went on my way.
Two weeks later, this is what I have:
You see those spiky leaves in the center of that dirt, yep those are the survivors. So far I have 3 out of 10 plants growing, this year is pretty much shot for them growing big enough to produces some hop cones, but they will have a good root base for next year. I'll keep monitoring the other 7 plants to see if they come up, but I won't know for sure until next spring.
I figure 3 out of 10 isn't bad for waiting this long.
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