Question about growing... troubleshooting.

[Vladens]

Got my rhizomes few weeks ago, planted them in small planters, and they started started coming out of the ground pretty quick; I was very excited!
Weather was still iffy here, so kept them in side by the south-facing window.
1st problem I ran in to was my cat chewing 2 of the 3 plants. Pretty quickly new shoots came out and started growing, no problem. 1 plant actually is about 2ft long, the other two less then a foot. This was couple weeks ago.

At some point it looked like they either stopped growing or are just a lot slower now. I thought maybe because we didn't have a lot of sun for couple weeks, just crappy & rainy weather. So, now that we have sunny & mild weather I thought it would be good to put the plants outside for maximum sun exposure.
Well, when I got home I found that because of the wind they all had un-wraped off the sticks they were growing around and have fallen down. One of the plants actually broke. The other 2 don't seem to be broken but some of the leaves look a bit dry & shriveled.

Do you think these plants are ruined?
(I understand that the 1st year is all about building roots and such, and I probably won't get a lot out of them, but I really would like to harvest at least something).
Should I cut them and hope for new shoots to come out, or is it too late for that?
Should I fertilize them?

Thanks for your help!

 

[kellanv]

I'll take a stab at a few things here:

Hops will not survive indoors unless under some pretty extreme grow lights. While I'm not sure if hops are toxic to cats as well as dogs but I would avoid letting the cat eat them

They absolutely need to be outside. They are pretty photoperiodic meaning that length of daylight has a profound effect on their growing and blooming cycle.

Hops do not climb slick objects very well. That includes bamboo stakes, painted surfaces etc. They like twine (jute, coir yarn, even stranded cabling). They will want to wrap themselves around the twine/trellis in a clockwise direction.

Prune broken vines and discard. Shriveling leaves are a sign of either too much water or too little. A lot of times hops will start dumping lower leaves in order to promote shoot growth on the tips so it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Make sure the soil becomes almost dry between waterings.

If the leaves start turning from dark green to yellow green or even yellowish it means they are deficient in iron and most likely everything else. Use a fertilizer with a lot of nitrogen in order to promote foliage growth. The other two macronutrients, especially potassium will be more important once flowering starts which may or may not happen this year.

Plants are pretty resilient given basic care. You can trim the bines back to the ground at this point and you will probably be ok but try to save any in tact bines and train them. I got 18' out of my first year rhizomes and a couple of flowers but I wouldnt count on much of a harvest.

Good luck!

Kellan

 

[Vladens]

Thanks, Kellan!

I was never planning on keeping them inside for too long, and I did move them to a different room once I realized that cats could ruin them.
Ok, I will do as you said.. I need to come up with a better trellis system... I don't even want to talk about I'm now I'll try to fix all that tonight.