Diagnose My Hops

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whitegoose

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29/1/09
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Location
Mount Lawley, WA
Hi all,

My first year cascades are about 2 meters tall now, and are healthy as for about the top 2 thirds... the bottom third is more or less drying out and dying. See the attached photos.

Any idea what the cause of these symptoms is?

IMG_0437.JPG


IMG_0438.JPG
 
it doesnt look happy thats for sure. Hard to tell whats going on from the pictures, but my PoR plant put up a foot or so of runners and then stalled for a while, then took off like a rocket.

Its a first year plant too and laready has taken over the side of my house and has hundreds of small hop flowers forming up.

Aghhhh good old PoR :)
 
how often do you water and fertilise it?
 
Looks a lot like my hallertauer and fuggle. They're in a sliver of soil next to the driveway and there's also a blue spruce nearby....in other words, not ideal soil. Mine do that for two reasons, they're stressed because they're not getting the nutrients they need (I think the spruce tree also acidifies the soil too much) and both years I've had them, they got spider mites. Have a really really close look at the stems lower down - you should see tiny green things moving quickly if you have mites. There will also be a whisper thin webbing under the leaves.

For mites, add a fair amount of manure. I read somewhere that well rotted manure will have predatory mites. I added manure this past year and while I still had mites, they weren't nearly as bad as the year before. I also added a fair amount of soil "sweetener" (to raise the pH to counteract the acidity of the spruce needles). I also fertilised them more often this year than last. This year I still had browning but it wasn't as bad as last year.

I also tried spraying the plant with a concentrated tobacco and dish soap solution last year. That did kill the mites, but not all of them. It just wasn't possible to get every nook & cranny with the spray. I boiled some pipe tobacco and strained the tobacco out. I then added a very small amount of dish soap to act as a surfactant so that the solution would spread out and cover everything instead of bead up.
 
going from here id ether say magnesium or potassium deficiency
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/min-def/hops.htm
they dont look like they are in pots how much have you been watering them as this could be a factor as well
I have had a similar issue on the magnesium front, its an essential ingredient of Chlorophyll I am told. I just added a teaspoon of epsom salts to 2 litres of water which I tipped on it which seemed to fix the problem.
 
Ive got the same problem. I trimmed the brown/black dead bits off. It has really thinned out around the base. I will get some photos tomorrow up as im liking to get it solved and fixed.
 

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