Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Signs of Recovery

Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to determine the exact nature of the problem that is causing the leaves to turn yellow and rust and fall off. Its difficult to research it online and the posts I created on a couple of hop growing forums didn't yield any good suggestions either. Its been extremely hot lately and the plants may be getting stressed from the heat and sun. We've also had sporadic heavy rains showers which is keeping my lawn long and green, but could be preventing the soil in the pots from being able to dry out completely. To compensate for that, I turned off the drip irrigation system and I've been monitoring the soil moisture level and manually watering only when needed. However, I can't prevent mother nature from continuing to water them for me. I did receive a suggestion from a friend to spray the plants with a Liquid Seaweed fertilizer solution. Liquid seaweed is a very low nitrogen fertilizer with more than 70 minerals, vitamins and enzymes that could aid in the plants recovery. Over the past few days, the plants do look like they're actually starting to improve. Although they lost a lot of their existing leaves, both plants have started to sprout new growth and leaves to replace what's died. Hopefully they're able to fully recover from whatever the problem has been.

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad to hear your plants are doing better. I've had a terrible time with spider mites, but I've managed to hold them at bay for the time being.

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  2. The Cascade certainly seems to be bouncing back. There's lots of new growth all over it. The nugget, however, sustained a lot more damage. It has a lot of new growth as well, but not nearly as much. I still have high hopes for both of them to recover.

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  3. I just went through a similar issue. the leave's turned brown and got crisp. I got some 10-10-10 fertilizer and used that once every 2 week's. I also cut off anything that was dead including the cone's that where drying up. I also started watering them twice per day when it is over 95 F. now I have been feeding them a 3-20-20 seaweed base fertilizer and they have recovered nicely. I may get some hops off the yet.

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