Father’s Day

We celebrated Father’s Day in our house on Saturday, June 20…a day ahead as it worked better for everyone’s schedules here. Had a great breakfast with Jenn and the kids, AND got a new travel mug to replace the one I crushed a few weeks back with the tractor…win!

Got an early start up to Saint Marys on Sunday, Father’s Day itself. Weather reports were originally calling for some rain in the afternoon but that was revised to near zero which was welcome news. As we’re nearing that time of the season when the hops will cease their vertical growth and put out their “sidearms” where the hop cones themselves will develop, getting enough nutrients and water to them is important.

I realized we still had some liquid fertilizer remaining from last year, so I wanted to get that going. Liquid fertilizers tend to be more immediate than granulars, which we’ve also added as well. Those will kick in for the later part of this part of the season, but we needed something more immediate.

We also wanted to re-install the drip irrigation system we originally had in the small yard. As such, we installed cables about 12″ above the hills upon which we zip-tied the irrigation tubing we purchased 4 years ago when the yard was originally put in. Brother Mike and I got all the elements in place, just need a few additional emitters as the original setup of the yard didn’t use the “V trellis” system so we have more bines climbing.

To wrap up the day, hiked the golf cart and the fully loaded 15gallon irrigation tank/sprayer to the large yard. Little bit of a haul for that little guy but did just great! This coming weekend, we’ll continue with the bio-fungicide spraying we started last week, another dose of fertilizer and complete the small yards drip irrigation system…go team 😉