Battling mother nature

Welcome to the first update on the hop farm. It has been an emotional ride thus far. Below is a picture of the current setup with the Cascade hop at front. To adjust for my semi-nomadic way of life, I built these cages to give the hops something non-permanent on which to grow. The Cascade has been taking full advantage of the cage and then some, while the Centennial has been slow going. In fact, the Centennial put on its first new growth in about a month sometime this week. The Cascade is easily 4 feet taller than the Centennial.

The hop farm has been a constant battle with a host of issues. The leaves of both plants have had chlorotic spots since the beginning and I've lately been battling both woolly and non-woolly aphids as well as tiny caterpillars. Here is an up close picture of the caterpillar damage to the Cascade leaves.

All in all, I'm very impressed with the progress, though I need to talk some sense into the Centennial to convince it that it's alright to keep growing. The following pictures are looking into the cages, with the Cascade first and the Centennial second. You can kind of see the spotting on the leaves in the Centennial picture. If anyone has any knowledge of hop growing and would like to enlighten me on what's causing this/how to alleviate the problem, I'm listening. Also, I'm accepting suggestions for ways to move these to North Carolina (~4 hrs away) without damaging them.