i planted my hops and the labels washed away

welp, thats pretty much it. i planted a centenial rhizome and a hallertau rhizome. i put little labels in the pots next to each one. i havent looked at the labels in a while. now i just have 2 blank labels in my pots and i am not sure which hop is which.

the one is about a foot tall now and the other is only 4 or 5 inches, so i am sure i wont be able to tell differences for a while.

i imagine i would have to wait till harvest?

Some variants have distinctive leaves, and you may be able to use those for a positive ID.

Also, I think Centennial is supposed to be a more vigorous grower, so my money would be on that being the 1' guy.

Keep 'em seperate and when they produce smell the cone. The Centennial should stand out.

What is with this phenomenon with people not remembering where they planted what? I have five varieties all over my yard and there is no way I would forget these. Maybe its easier to forget the longer you have them...

FlySpargeVorlauf said:

What is with this phenomenon with people not remembering where they planted what? I have five varieties all over my yard and there is no way I would forget these. Maybe its easier to forget the longer you have them...

Click to expand...

I got so excited when I planted mine that I ripped the little tags off them and planted them without taking any stock whatsoever about what I was putting where.

Luckily I only have two varieties, but I felt pretty silly about 10 minutes after I did it.

At least you have two very distinctive varieties, at least when they are ripe. There's basically four leaf types and eight cones types, so neither of those approaches works very well. And some hops, like Cascade, can have three of the four leaves on one bine.

FlySpargeVorlauf said:

What is with this phenomenon with people not remembering where they planted what? I have five varieties all over my yard and there is no way I would forget these. Maybe its easier to forget the longer you have them...

Click to expand...

Drink beer, plant rhizome, drink beer, plant rhizome and so on... I have talked with a couple brewers who forgot which one was which this way.

so...for now i'll assume the centenial is the taller one. the leaves on the plants do look very different. i'll take pictures and post them later

Maybe this is my inner engineer talking, but I highly recommend keeping a brewing log/journal. I typically keep one anytime I'm experimenting with new recipes and techniques. If you just sketch out your planter setup, you'd be good to go. Keep track of annual progress, weather, and other conditions. You'll be able to see what you're doing right and wrong after a couple years.

I sketched out the whole yard this year. Last year I wrote the variety name on the house/shop that it was near, down near the ground. That has already faded out too much to read so the map is on the wall of the garage now.

i have a brew log of everything i brewed. i just didnt think these labels would wash away

My plastic stakes with the names written in permanant marker started to fade withing days so I made little copper stakes with the plant variety stamped on them. Now, listening to you guys I'm getting paranoid. What if a racoon or groundhog comes along and pulls out my stakes? What if the racoon wants to mess with my head and he shuffles my stakes?

good idea with the stamped ones. i wrote on the pots with a permanent marker and also made tags. they are both gone

Argh... I JUST posted about this a few days ago on another thread. Yes, it's easy to forget and no, permanent marker is not permanent. Luckily you have two types that should be fairly easy to distinguish. Let 'em grow and let us know.