Slowed Growth

[NathPowe]

Howdy. First-time grower here so bear with me. Put a Great Lakes Hops chinook crown in the ground about two months ago. It was growing quite strong for a while - climbing 2-3 inches up the rope I strung per day. However, over the last week to 10 days, it has slowed down significantly. Maybe climbing 1/2 inch to 1 inch per day, and a couple days not really climbing at all. If I had to guess I'd say it's climbed about 5-6 feet up the rope so far.

Any insight on what's going on or what I could do to keep it growing well? Planted it straight into the ground. Since I have a fair amount clay in the area I planted, I substituted some of that for a mix of potting soil and compost. I've been watering it a bit every morning (early) and it gets a solid 5-6 hours of direct southern sun each day. The plant looks healthy, its just really slowed its climbing.

Any info. is appreciated. Cheers.

 

[dlaramie08]

How much water are you giving it, and have you fed it at all? Just putting compost and potting soil is not enough nutrient for these beasts.

 

[NathPowe]

Probably about a half gallon each morning as guess. I also recently mixed in more manure compost in the soil around the plant.

 

[dlaramie08]

The plant has probably depleted the nitrogen in the soil, which would explain the sluggish growth. If you are wanting to stay organic, you could try blood meal. That may take a while to see results. If you don't care about that, put some fertilizer on it, heavy on the nitrogen, since you have decent soil from what you describe, you may just want to do some 34-0-0 and watch it jump to the sky.

 

[NathPowe]

Cool. I'll check out some fertilizers or blood meal or something. Thanks man.

 

[NathPowe]

Hey dlaramie, sorry to keep with the questions man, but SWMBO has some plant food that's 19-6-12 already at the house. Think this stuff would do the trick? I don't mind buying something but I figured I'd check since we already have it.

Thanks.

 

[WayFrae]

I think that will work just fine. Just be sure to follow the instructions so you don't over fertilize.

 

[thaymond]

Be careful with the higher numbers you don't want to burn your plants with fertilizer either. I'd stick to lower nitro numbers (10s the highest) on a newer plant. I use vigoro 10-10-10 on mine and got great growth and results. I'm using it again this year on new plants and they're starting to take off. Even my Cascade, which I thought bit the dust, started to come back to life after I hit it with some fertilizer. I would halve the amount for the 19-6-12 just to be on the safe side.

 

[dlaramie08]

Yes always be careful when applying fertilizer no matter what your concentration is. That one your wife has is fine.


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[afr0byte]

19 6 12 sounds like osmocote...not sure if that'd release fast enough?

 

[NathPowe]

Yeah, that's what it was called. I had to go to the depot the other day so I just ended up scoring some blood meal and used that. Thanks for the tips everyone.

 

[JDGator]

if you are using fertilizer, try to keep it off the plant best you can. Some fertilizers will burn you plant so bad you can kill them. i lift the plant greens off the soil and sprinkle around them.

 

[NathPowe]

So since I've got this thread going, I thought I'd ask about long-term fertilizing. Any thoughts on how often should I add more blood meal? I just added the recommended amount from the package for the area I was treating (I just have one plant so it's a really small area). From some further reading, I've gathered that hops are big nitrogen hogs, so I'm guessing re-applying will be beneficial/necessary - but I certainly don't want to add too much.

Any info/suggestions are appreciated. Cheers.

 

[NathPowe]

Dropping another post to bump this.

The blood meal I added has definitely helped. About 5 or 6 days after I added it the plant is really starting to take off again.

Having said that, I'm still curious if anyone has recommendations on if/how often I should continue adding some here and there to keep the plant happy. Any insight is appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I use standard Miracle Gro(24-8-16) on all my plants every 2 weeks with great results.

Once my plants limit out up my 20+ foot trellis and start flowering i swap to a Super Bloom high phosphorus style fert every 2 weeks until harvest to get fat cones.