Spring 2024 Hops Update | Spring Regrowth | Sprouting

The good folks at Michigan State University (MSU) Extension have been a great resource to us over the years. They provide monthly webinar sessions for growers on a variety of timely in-season topics, their free Hop Management Guide, and have been available via email for questions and concerns. Now, they’re focused more on conventional, larger hop Farms based in and around Michigan, but we still find a lot of useful content for our region and our size of family Farm operation.

Management Activities Guide

The following is their “Management Activities Guide” which is slightly ahead of where we’re at, but it’s been a great resource in planning out the season and roughly where we should be.

One of the earliest activities for the yard is flame weeding. It’s not so much for the weeds as we’ll be dealing with those all season long, it’s more so to 1) kill the “bull shoots” that come up first and 2) help in the regimen that includes organic fungicide, to help rid the yard of any instance of downy mildew. Bull shoots are the earliest of the bines that appear and although they’re exciting to see as the first in Spring, they also tend to be the weakest and least productive. So we bid adieu to those early along with the first flush of weeds.

We will continue to spray organic fungicide for another week or two just to help guarantee downy mildew never rears its ugly head. Next was reinstalling the solar array’s control panel and getting that all hooked up. This will be the first season using the new wireless tank full sensor, along with the solar powered transmitter/receiver configuration. I expect some tweaking with placement so they’re “line of sight” but hopeful beyond that, it’ll just work as it should!

Sometimes Still Learning the Hard Way

We found out the hard way the other week that our tractor bucket’s hydraulic lines were ready to retire. And by “retire” we mean they blew out when trying to turn the compost pile. As with many things, sometimes we are forced to wait until something breaks before replacing it. This probably really should’ve happened with the dealer originally worked on the tractor years ago, however we did get another 5 years out of them so we’ll consider it a draw.

The ratchets and support lines/cables for the upcoming drip irrigation are also in which then really helps to make it feel like things are coming together. Next weekend will be the stringing of the small yard and training of the flush of new, healthy bines 🙂