Frustrating!

I got 4 Cascade this spring, and two of them had white fuzz on them, which transferred to the soil about a week after planting. I got two more sent by freshops as replacements.

I have moved the pots outside to get sun a couple of times. However, the hops are growing sporadically. One plant is goign gangbusters (the second time, as the first time the bine wilted). The others are not growing very fast. Last time I looked, one of the pots had all the sprouts neatly clipped about 3 millimeters off the soil. Pi55e5 me of because I found a cutworm on one of my other pots after it had already chopped the stem off the biggest sprout.

I did find that the wilted bines will produce plants. I laid the bine, with still-green leaf clusters, into the soil, and it appears as though they are going to start growing roots and become viable! But, darn it's slow. I don't expect ANY flowers from most of my plants this year. This is after the initial fantastic growth. I'm not giving up hope on the plants, but my expectations are quite low at this point.

Most hop plants don't produce much the first year. I got a total of 1.5 ounces off of 12 plants the first year.

This is a good example why hops should be planted in the ground. It's not a seed, it's a plant ready to grow. No need a baby it along. All of the temp./humidity/light variables will screw with your hardy plant much more than a night or two of frost. I put three rhizomes in the ground three weeks ago from the same vendor, and two have broken ground with the third lagging only because of the size of the rhizome. They all had the white spots and they all were put in the ground OUTSIDE the day that they arrived. I pulled the one that hasn't sprouted today and the white is gone.

I would have put it in the ground but it was still very early when I bought them. I also didn't have a place to put them (still don't, but that is a common problem with procrastinators). I'm working on a permanent location.

They did look somewhat better today. not sure why. I guess all I can do is plant them and wait for them to do their thing. Oh, and I still need to buy some stuff for a trellis.