Spring has definitely sprung: the mercury's starting to climb back to short pants levels, and the flora has burst forth in a wide assortment of leaf and flower. Add to that my hops, still in their planters; growing them in 18-gallon totes was supposed to be more of a temporary fix, but since we don't seem any closer to settling in anywhere in particular right now, it's good to see them flourishing so well under less-than-optimal conditions.
Other than being in the totes and thus not able to really spread out their seriously scary root systems (if you haven't seen photos of mature hop plants, get on the Google) a friend of some of our fellow tenants, in helping them move during the winter, backed into the planters, destroying the one that held the Goldings plant. After a couple months of personal sloth, I finally picked up a new tote and took to the touchy prospect of replanting the mangled plant. The superfine rootlets were shredded, but the main roots seemed to be in good shape; I pretty much dumped the whole mess into the new planter with no idea of which end had been up and hoped for the best. The new tote is narrower and taller than the old, meaning that the bines would have a lot more digging to do once they figured out which way was up.
By March the Centennials and Willamettes had begun to poke out of the ground; the Goldings kept me worried for a couple more weeks before emerging, as hearty as ever. They are weeds, after all. There was lots of early growth; they'd probably just turn into bushes if I let them. It wasn't until last week that I was finally able to prune them and train the bines to the leads; by then, they'd already grown several feet long. Now they're cleaned up, trained, and climbing. They don't seem to be making the same crazy amount of headway up the leads as they have in past years, but it's still early in the season, and the temperatures haven't really stabilized yet. Hopefully I'll be able to convince some friends to water them and give them more line while we're away this summer. In which case, I foresee a nice wet-hopped APA making its way into the rotation come September or October.
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