Losing my thrill (on blueberry hill)

With apologies to Fats Domino for the title...

Back in the winter, I planted 50 blueberry bushes of four different varieties (blue chip, jersey, berkley, and croatan) from Finch nursery in North Carolina. All made it nicely through the winter but in the last month or so, I've lost nine of the ten blue chip variety. I've emailed the nursery to get more information and hopefully, some replacements.

O Hoppy Day!

I made an early first harvest of the Cascade hops today after watching and testing them for little over a week to make sure they were close to maturity. Mature hops should show developed lupulin glands with the fine yellow pollen which holds their distinctive scent that is essential for brewing beer. A slight browning of the lower leaves of each bract is also a good sign. Most of mine were still mostly green so I know this is probably earlier than I should have picked. However, these vines still hold many undeveloped flowers and I anticipate that there will be another picking later in the summer. By removing these now, I can push the energy toward the remaining flowers. My two year old vines yielded just over one gallon of hops (about two 48 oz containers), much better than last year's meager first time harvest. Next year, I plan to do a better job of training and trellising as well as pruning the vines to max out the plant's energy. I've got the flowers drying in the food dehydrator now on the lowest setting, which is about 95 degrees.

There's a national hop shortage this year after a fire in the pacific northwest destroyed a warehouse last year so growing your own hops makes more sense than ever. Today's prices at Northern Brewer show that leaf hop Cascades are selling for $6.50 for 2 oz. My harvest today is worth $312 retail (without shipping). Not a bad investment.