British Columbia: First year Hop growth

I'm getting very poor growth out of two new hop rhizomes I planted in April (Centennial and Chinook), with just a couple of sprouts producing one small leaf each. I wasn't expecting any cone production in the first year, but the growth I've gotten strikes me as much worse than expected. I started with poor soil, so I put a lot of effort into prepping the soil and adding organic matter, and they're planted in a southern exposure with full sun.

Does anyone have any advice on what I should reasonably expect for first year growth from a Hop plant?

 

Watering regime? There seem to be many instances of people chatting about this phenomenon on this forum: Hops are growing, but slowly

 

Thanks for the link - it seems as though first year performance is pretty mixed. I haven't been watering much, as I've read about their preference to be well-drained a bit on the dry side, so I'll perhaps step it up a bit, along with some fertilizer/mulch as suggested on there.

 

*nod* Once these are happy, they should put on a lot of growth.

 

I drove past some hop farms in the Okanagan and Fraser Valley this weekend, and all of their bines were in the 8' range, so I got fairly jealous.

 

Put some blood meal on them, and I'm finally seeing some real growth after a few weeks.