disappointing hops

I had been hoping for hops, but today, when I dug up the two rhizomes to check on them, all I found were these rotted out shells of sticks. Where did we go wrong? My only hypothesis is that we watered their container too often, causing them to rot. One of them definitely had white root nubs when we planted it.

Has anyone seen this problem before?

ipa yeastcake bread

We transferred our IPA to a secondary fermenter and I decided to try using the leftover yeast cake to make some bread. I just added some flour and water to the yeastcake to make it into a sponge (I added some bread yeast too), which I fermented until I felt like making bread. It doesn't have much of a hop aroma because this was before dry-hopping, but it is sooo bitter! ...and tasty, especially with marg and honey.

I also saved the hops for future experiments. Got any good recipes for reusing homebrew hops?