1st Year Pruning Questions

Just planted some Cascade rhizomes but they grew to 2ft before I was able to build my trellis system (which is really awesome, by the way). We had put chicken wire around the rhizomes to keep something that had been eating some leaves out but my strongest vine started wrapping itself through the chickenwire before I had the trellis built. I unwrapped it but it ended up getting bent in a couple places and now the end of the vine is limp and turning black. Also, one of the leaves close to the top is blackened as well. Can I just cut off the end of the vine and this leaf or will it recover on its own without my aid?

Also, I read to prune down to the 2 strongest vines per rhizome, so I did. But there are several secondary vine offshoots from these main vines that are taking off. Should I trim those back too? These are all located around the base of the plant. Ive read theories of pruning subsidiary shoots on vine plants back in order to allow that energy to go to the main vines instead, so I was kind of leaning on pruning them back. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Just planted, let everything grow. The one that you damaged will begin to send out sidearms at the leaf junctions below the break which you should allow to climb also. The more foliage you can let the plant produce during this establishment year will give the plant the ability to convert a ton of sunlight energy into a form that the plant can use. Happy Growing.

First year you won't get too many useable hops. The goal is to get the bines to grow as much as possible, which maximizes the root ball. I wouldn't prune at all. Year 2+, a small number of bines per plant will maximize height and hop growth.

Thanks for the advice. I had been following the directions from The Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Hops, Malts, and Brewing Herbs by John Peragine so I had pruned down to the 2 main vines per rhizome as instructed. I'll leave them to grow however they want from now on. Hopefully I can still get some decent hops this year.