Holy hops!

Year two of growing hops in my backyard is crazy compared to the first. Granted, we’ve had an extremely warm spring and a wet May, but DAMN. It’s mid-June and I’ve already run out of vertical (and for some plants, horizontal) space for them to grow. What are these plants going to do for the next three months??? I’m hoping the answer is “make hop cones” instead of consuming my family like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

These pics were taken in mid/late May:

And here we are on 6/10/12:

By comparison, the photo below was taken last year on 6/12/11. The plants were only two feet high at this time last year. My yield this year is going to be NUTZ!!