Is this a deficiency?

I need some help from the pros.

3rd year Cascade. Did GREAT both previous years. Added manure this spring. This one started slow and just started showing these signs in 4 out of the 8 vines. Any ideas on what is causing this?

I have six plants, this one is the worst, one other has the same deal going on but it;s not as bad.

They look thirsty to me.

damdaman said:

they look thirsty to me.

Click to expand...

+1

I think thirsty would just be a general flaccidness. That type of cupping is pretty distinct. Upward cupping can be a sign of a recent herbicide application to the surrounding area . . . I'm pretty sure it's upward. That may be a sign of a virus as they cause the plants to do quite different things than diseases. I'd let them go and see what happens. You may also want to do some searching for hop virus pictures. Oregon/Washington State usually have a nice compendium of pest problems floating around on the internet. Good luck!

If you look at the grass around the retaining wall blocks, it appears to be drought stress causing that grayish green color. I'm not certain about the hops though. How deeply are you watering the hops? Have you seen a heat wave recently? Is there a tree next to the hop plants that may be sucking the water away from the hop root zone?

Thanks guys! All of my plants are setup on the same drip irrigation zone and they have all been watered plenty. I'm not sure why the picture above looks as it does, it's not like that in real life. Cell phone pic quality?

This one gets the most sun but its gotten equal water for the two past years too. The leaves are curling downward, like there is a drawstring at the tips of the leaves.

I accidentally hit one of my other plants with weed b gone and those are curling up and have been for a while. I didn't spray in the general direction of this bed at all.

I watered heavily tonight with a bio bloom mix (organic fertilizer) but ill check those west coast sites tonight.

Just found that this IS some kind of virus.
Now time to find out how to fix it.

http://www.freshops.com/hop-growing/hop-diseases-and-pests/
Quote from Freshops: The side arms are shunted and vine growth is poor. Quite often the growing tip of the vines curves downward and becomes brittle and dies. As the new shoots grow this also happens to them. The leaves are dark green and curled downward. The cones may also turn brown and fail to develop.

aaaand it looks like this one is going to be dug up and burned. S**t.
http://www.hopresearchcouncil.org/research_eastwell.html
a Quote from hopresearch: Unlike other broad categories of plant pathogens, viruses and virus-like agents are unique in that once they infect hop plants, there are no practical means by which the pathogen can be eliminated. The only opportunity for control occurs before plants become infected.

Hey man, been dealing with this kinda stuff for the past 20 years. Having a degree in Agriculture, I know that the only way to totally nail down the culprit is to send tissue samples to a lab to be analyzed for confirmation for big $$. Look, it's only a hobby so I let it go. The hops still produce and you still get to watch in amazement as to how they grow. I'm not saying to abandon the whole search for the problem, but just to roll with it and see what happens. It is 2012, but I found out that they didn't take into account "leap years". So it's all a 'wash' as I see it. I understand your concern but sometimes it's just better to just let things be as they will. Especially with Agriculture . Have to quantify this post by saying that I just got back from the local pub, and they treated me very well. It's all real so Hop On!!

HA!
Thanks for chiming in B-Hop! I was hoping you'd find this and didn't want to bug you with a PM. Before I go and dig the thing up and burn it (so that it doesn't infect the rest of my plants) the plan is to chop off the infected bines and let new ones grow. They may be fine, they may not but what the hell.

I chopped the four (of five) affected main vines this morning. Fingers crossed.

Sitting here thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that I'm to blame. About 3 weeks ago, I pulled some of the shoots that were popping out at the corners of the box back to the crown and snipped them under ground. This is probably when the plant got infected.