Burrs Already?

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slayer84

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Marion, IL
This is my second year growing hops and they seem to be doing quite well. They came up in late march and are now 14ft high with the sidearms producing burrs on all early and mid-season. Is this normal? Weather here has been very cool 40's-50's.
 
that's what you get for training the first growth up! haha. you'll have early cones but you'll also have some coming in later if you allow more shoots to climb. commercial growers generally whack off the early growth and then at some point begin to train them. that way they can harvest the whole yard while everything ripens at one uniform time. when the plants are only 1 or 2 years old you can keep up with the early/late harvest regime but once they are firmly established, there are so many cones that it'll take you HOURS to determine which are the ripe ones and which you should leave for later. it gets to be alot like work so i yank out everything that comes up for about the first month and then right about now, begin to train what i want to produce. big learning curve. have fun!
 
Completely normal and you can harvest the early cones; then get a second harvest later.

PS I hate you! My 4th & 5th year plants are less than a foot tall. Had 3 freezes last week.
 
that's what you get for training the first growth up! haha. you'll have early cones but you'll also have some coming in later if you allow more shoots to climb. commercial growers generally whack off the early growth and then at some point begin to train them. that way they can harvest the whole yard while everything ripens at one uniform time. when the plants are only 1 or 2 years old you can keep up with the early/late harvest regime but once they are firmly established, there are so many cones that it'll take you HOURS to determine which are the ripe ones and which you should leave for later. it gets to be alot like work so i yank out everything that comes up for about the first month and then right about now, begin to train what i want to produce. big learning curve. have fun!

This makes me feel better. I cut down my 2nd year hops a while ago and my wife is looking at telling me how short they are then wondering how tall they would have been. I keep telling her not to worry (but I was worrying). I was going to string up the trellis later this week. Looks like I'm in line with B Hoppy's system, which makes me feel better.
 
I couldn't bring myself to trim the monsters... Two harvests is great ;-)

One trick may be to train the first runs up one path and the second on another.... for right now I'll do everything I can to get a few more cones!
 

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