First year cascade... what is this?

I planted two cascade rhizomes this year. One is doing great. The other has something weird going on. Some of the leaves have a light green color on part of them. The part that is the light green color seems to stop growing. And also all of the new growth has the same color and the whole plant seems to be slowed compared to the other plant. Look at the picture and you can see where the leaf is smaller on the section that is light green. Does anybody know what this could be?

hops on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Nitrogen deficiency.

I have seen it on my cascades too - soil test confirmed I needed more N

Buy a bag of fertilizer, you'll be fine.

It has been fertilized so that should be fine. Also, the other rhizome is planted in the same dirt and it is leaps and bound over the other one. I think it has some kind of disease or something. Or maybe some kind of root problem.

look at the underside of the leaf very carefully, maybe you will see some very small liquid sucking bugs. --Purely a guess.

another guess: Do you have a fairly new house??

Nothing underneath the leaves. And my house is about nine years old.

The best way to describe it is that any new growth stays young. It stays the light green color, and stays small.

When my plants have come up it has been common for some of the lower leaves to be a little deformed like this. As it got bigger they look more uniform. If every leaf looks similar I don't think it's bugs. A soil deficiency could be the problem. I don't get that wound up in it because, like I said, things look better as the plant gets bigger around here.

"Take your protein pills and put your helmet on"

How wet is the soil? Is it bogged?

If yes, no amount of fertilizer is going to help if the roots are shutting down due to oxygen stress. I ask because oxygen stress looks EXACTLY like nutrient deficiency because no nutrient is getting in the plant.

I don't think the soil is bogged. I water it daily and it drains well. Maybe I should try letting it dry out and see what happens. Anyway, I took a couple of more pictures. the first one is the Hop in question zoomed out a little more so you can get a better idea what it looks like overall. The second one is the other cascade rhizome planted two feet from the first one. It seems perfectly happy.

Something wrong? on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Normal Hops on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I'll be damned if that doesn't look like nitrogen deficiency..... The comment about too much water might be the issue too though.

Other than the color that growth looks fine - I suggest that you water only when the ground is dry completely. Unless the temps are in 80's or 90's I water about twice a week on new plants, however I do watch them daily and if any wilting I will water. Hops are very hardy and a wilt will warn you without hurting the plant as long as you water that day.

In first year you want the roots to grow and stressing the plants a bit encourages root growth.

I have also noticed a similar light green when I over fertilised one plant (my container fell close to it), maybe , just maybe you put a bit too much down for such a young root system. That plant of mine also grew slower until the fertiler worked its way out the system. I have a pic somewhere...

Zulu said:

Other than the color that growth looks fine - I suggest that you water only when the ground is dry completely. Unless the temps are in 80's or 90's I water about twice a week on new plants, however I do watch them daily and if any wilting I will water. Hops are very hardy and a wilt will warn you without hurting the plant as long as you water that day.

In first year you want the roots to grow and stressing the plants a bit encourages root growth.

I have also noticed a similar light green when I over fertilised one plant (my container fell close to it), maybe , just maybe you put a bit too much down for such a young root system. That plant of mine also grew slower until the fertiler worked its way out the system. I have a pic somewhere...

Click to expand...

You could be right. I'm just going to leave it alone for a while then. Only problem now is that it is going to be raining the next several days..

looks like it could be nute burn. make sure u give it a flush watering between fertilizations. otherwise the nutrients will build up to poisonous levels.

These are always tricky to figure out. As has been said many time, it's easy to over fertilize, hard to under fertilize. Same goes for water to some extent. I think the watering thing has to do with essentially water-logging the roots such that nutrient absorption is inhibited. Thus, it's could be an iron deficiency say, but because of a root issue (whether from burn of fertilizer or the over-watering issue).

For years we've raised (I know, I said raised) orchids. A common problem early on was the leaves turing yellow, leaf drop, leaves getting "wilty", and ultimately death. Thinking intuitively, it would seem that they weren't getting enough water, or fertilizer. When you'd take the dead plant out of it's pot, the roots were essentially mushy / rotten. It turned out that it was OVER watering. Quickest way to kill one of those babies. I've seen it with tomatoes, and other plants, and I'm convinced it's the easiest thing to over do.

Early on the small plants don't need as much water. They just don't have the root system to handle it all, and they don't have the leaf system to need much either. When they get bigger, you'll have a huge leaf burden, and the water loss will be exacerbated by the shear volume of plant material using water to go about it's various required photo-reactions. That and it'll be warmer. So, you'll need more water then, and it'll be harder to over water. But early on, it's real easy...even if it seems to drain well.

As for fertilizer, I've only done it once so far on my new hop plants, and it was at 1/4 strength.

All the best,

Mike