last year's hops

So I made a somewhat exciting discovery late last week. As I was potting my hops for this years crop, I noticed that the hops I planted last year were coming up. They weren't just coming up though - they were coming up strong!


I decided to pull back the wood mulch and compost around them. Put in a little brick border to help remind me not to step on them.

I am starting to rethink my container experiment for this year. If you look at the photo below, there is still a remnant twig that I need to prune from last year's bine. This year's bines are ~twice the diameter by comparison. I knew that they liked it outside and in the ground, however given Nebraska's non-ideal hop climate - I wasn't expecting them to come up so well this year. Don't get me wrong, I am not going to give up on the container experiment - rather I'm going to start comparing all three settings. I'm going to call this week - week 2.