# New Hops growing, worried about disease



## noxidc (25/10/18)

Hi All
I have recently bought rhizomes this season, 4 of them. 2 chinook and 2 cascade to try grow. wondering if more experienced eyes could help me

They have started pretty good but i have now noticed that the 2 Chinook Plants have started to get holes in most of the leaves. I am hoping it is not downey mildew. I have now started spraying with a bicarb solution but google reckons i may need to cut off all teh infected bines. 

Chinook, 2 plants
https://imgur.com/a/6RbADL1 

The other plant is the Cascade. I have been feritlising with npk only twices,. Once a month.It has started to go yellow around all the leaves, I thought it might be Mag deficeny and added a little epsom salts to the soil but have not seen much improvement yet. 

Cascade
https://imgur.com/a/R7MONTB


Any insite would be appreciated. 

Noxi


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## noxidc (26/10/18)

Ok False alarm. I did some more closer investigation and turns out that the plants with the half holes are from the baby caterpillers on them. I Saw more holes and checked. the underside had 2 tiny tiny green caterpillers. checking the other plants and the same thing. I spent a good hour digging through the leaves to see them, plus they like dropping in the soil and hiding.

As for the yellowing one. i added some epsom salt a few days ago and that seems to be giving it some more colour.

Phew!


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## Belgrave Brewer (27/10/18)

Disease is not common with hops in AUS, and we don't have hop specific downy mildew or powdery mildew here thanks to quarantine laws.

Yates make a range of fertilisers that should work fine for the backyard grower. A growing fertiliser then a flowering fertiliser at the first sign of burrs.Whatever you use, make sure it has the micronutrients that may be lacking in potting mix and some soils. Soil pH is paramount for maximum take up of nutrients. 6 to 6.5 is the sweet spot, but a little over of under won't kill them.

Glad you caught the caterpillars before they did more damage, they can decimate hops in numbers. It's a good idea to check in on them when you can, especially checking the underside of leaves. Snails, aphids and mites can also be a problem.

Good luck!


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## altone (27/10/18)

Sure doesn't look like downy mildew to me, more like insect damage.
I'd be spraying with Neem oil or a pyrethrin based insecticide.
Regardless I don't think it's going to destroy your bines. 
Just water them regularly and feed them some manure. 
If you have access to rock dust use a bit of that to cover all the micronutrient requirements.

As you can see I'm not a fan of the chemical based fertilisers and remedies - but that's just me


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