Irene damage to your HOPS?

[solbes]

Thankfully I'm in the Midwest so my first year babies were all safe and sound. But I was thinking of all of you on the East coast. Not just for your safety, but also for your HOPS! How did they survive? Did most people harvest first and then not worry much about it?

 

[stevo155]

I was worried about mine but they held up fine. We were supposed to get sustained winds of 30-40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph where I am ( eastern edge of the storm ), but it never really seemed to get that strong. Most of the wind was out of the East and blew across the hops instead of directly at them.

I thought about harvesting on Saturday, but didn't have any place to dry them since outside was out of the question and my basement and garage were full of cars and other yard items I didn't want to blow away.

 

[jessox80]

I harvested one plant early because I'd stopped by an excellent local brewpub and heard they lost much of their harvest to a microburst a few weeks back. The one I trimmed was certainly a bit before peak, but I'm pleased with the results (especially since it's a first year plant). The one I left is BEAT up, with a few sad looking sidearms and bruised hop petals everywhere I look : (
I am relieved she made it though; hopefully some food and sunshine will cure her ills.

 

[day_trippr]

I harvested most cones on Friday anticipating Irene's worst, but left those that were clearly not ready for picking. We got enough wind here to shatter a big old maple tree, and this morning I noticed there were quite a few cones scattered on the ground, so I'm definitely glad I picked when I did.

My twelve bines are looking a bit shabby after the beating they took from the wind, but there's still roughly half as many cones remaining as I picked, mostly Cascades and Chinooks, and a few Centennials (plus a few handfuls of cones that my three little Fuggles rhizomes that I planted in late May are producing). It will be interesting to compare the intensity of these with what I picked earlier...

Cheers!

 

[Broncobum]

My cones were decimated. I just picked maybe 1/10th of what was on the bines pre-storm. Definitely no home grown IPA this year.

 

[vanceromance]

No damage to my first year vines. I have small cones on my cascades and didn't lose any.

 

[beerloaf]

The storm knocked down my Centennial, EKG, Cascade, and Hallertau. I can probably salvage all but the Cascade. The funny thing is that my Mt Hood was not even touched. Still standing just fine.

beerloaf

 

[Flux113]

Sorry for anyone who had hop damage, or any other damage due to the past weekend's weather. I have some first year columbus and cascade bines that have been doing really well. I almost picked them last week in preparation, but decided to leave them on. Luckily my immediate area of New Jersey did not get hit as bad as some others and my house and hops remained intact. I actually ended up picking most of them yesterday since they were starting to turn a little too brown on the petals.