Short and Stocky: Geometric Training

I'm an amateur gardener and home brewer, and I happened upon a cascade and a nugget plant from an acquaintance. I've done hours of reading on this forum and watched the videos and pictorials. It's great information.

I've got a question.

If a vine is allowed to grow to 8 feet, then you continually clip the top to keep it 'short and stocky', can you still get a decent yield?

I know this technique is used for other plants, such as "pinching runners" on tomatoes etc. It's a technique I've used for passiflora incarnata, a very climbey viney bastard, and the flower yield is still extremely high and the vines healthy.

Since hops are related to cannibis, I know growers say online that stocky plants are desirable, and they employ various techniques to keep them short and stocky as well.

Hops? Even if you don't clip them off at 8 feet, or 10 or "X", does anyone experiment with geometric training, where you let it shoot up 3 feet, then bring the rope down and over a foot, let it shoot back up another 3 feet, then bring the rope down and back the other way a foot, and so on, to a height of 8 -10 feet with over 20 feet of actual vine? Think of it as a backwards zig-zag pattern.


Ok, I guess this question is long enough. Discuss!

Mine tend to go the full 13+ feet and then as the top reaches a couple feet about the top wire and starts leafing out, it tends to "fall" back down. My Nuggets had a good 9 feet of bine trailing back to earth and had a pretty good yield in that section of the bine.

I wouldn't say it was terribly "pretty", though.

If left to grow 'naturally' hops will grow very tall and most of the crop will be in the top 1/3 (or so) of the plant, so I think if you clipped them they'd produce more runners but you'd still have a smaller crop.
Rather than clip them, train them along horizontally, in a zig-zag, or up/down pattern, however this would be time consuming and tedious since they grow so quickly.

I only have two plants to worry about, and time in the garden is good for blood pressure, I enjoy it. It isn't a chore for me!