my first hop

This weekend, I went hiking and camping from Thursday until Sunday. The trip involved beer, so I'll post about that later. The big news upon my return was that three of my hop bines developed a bunch of burrs while I was away, and today I noticed that my first hop cone had formed from one of them. From all of the reading that I did when I bought the young plants a few months ago, I wasn't really expecting to see much flowering, if any, this year, but it looks like at least one of the plants is going to flower pretty heavily. I guess all the pruning and watering and fertilizing really paid off.

Here's a shot of the full backyards bines, along with the rhubarb I've been harvesting all summer for a big batch of rhubarb braggot.

This is a shot of the top vine, which so far is looking like it's going to be the most heavily flowering of my hops.

Here's a close-up of some of the burrs that have formed.

Here's the first cone that has formed from one of the burrs. This cone is on one of the plants in the front yard.