Sup with wrapping the bine around the base for extra length?

I am retooling my garden to try to give my hops more room to grow this year. As a result of a variety of factors my hops cannot grow vertically above about seven feet, give or take a few inches. At the point they must stop I plan on providing a lot of horizontal space. I'm concerned that I'm going to lose a lot of yield potential by stunting their vertical growth.

I've seen people here talk about being able to strip the leaves off the first few feet of the bine and circling the base with it and letting the bines grow up again so the plant thinks its taller than it is and starts producing cones at a lower height. Is this actually productive? Anybody actually do this? Any concerns that the bines might rot sitting on the ground?

Alternatively, I thought I read about a guy here who was growing along a fence where the hops only grew up 4-5 feet and then went horizontally for a long time and seemed to get a good harvest.

Should I be worried about any of this or is seven feet enough vertical space?

I've never heard of this. I have seen a few people growing hops along fences, and some farms grow them up about 10' and then run them horizontally across strings. (Pictures from old farms.)

I have a ~8 foot trellace for mine. I string wires from the top of the trellace at about a 10-15 degree angle up to the roof of the sliding glass door bay on the rear of my house, and have no issues with harvest. I do have to manually wrap the bines around the wires but it's no big deal. I don't wrap them around at the base but I do strip about 2-3 feet of leaves off of the bottom, have had no issues so far.

I looked at them two days ago and saw no signs of life. Yesterday after work, I went out to look at them and the centennial and cascades were up almost 8 inches! They are loving this warm weather we've been having, it's already 81 deg. at 12:45pm here in SE Michigan.

You have a few options. One, you could do the horizontal thing once they get to the top. This works fine, but you will have to manually train the bines 1-2 times per week (if not more frequently) to keep them growing in the right direction. They will continue to try and grow vertically if you don't train them by hand. Option two, the fence thing. I do both fence and trellis. The fence thing actually works out great for me. Mainy becasue it traps moisture better than the arid trellis set up and helps keep the spider mites at bay (with which I have bad problems if I'm not careful). Same thing with the fence though, you have to train the bine manually to get it to grow horizontally. Option 3, prune the tops off the bines once they reach your desired height. I actually do this with my cascades now. I have a 12 foot trellis and prune when they get to the top. This stimulates the auxillary buds and makes them shorter and more bushy. You can control bine length to a certain extent this way and still get a good yield. Option 4, train the bine back down the main stem and then let it grow back up. Again, manual training will be a must until you get to the bottom. Only problem with option 3 and option 4 is that the bushier the bine gets, the more hassle it is to harvest. Also, more cones will get shaded this way, and your harvest as a whole will not mature at the same rate. I normally do 2-3 harvests per plant so that I can get most of the cones at peak maturity.

Hey BBL,

Great response. I've not heard of anyone trimming their bines at a certain height but I am definatly interested. It sounds like the perfect strategy for what I'm planning.(a glorified hop privacy fence for my deck)

Do you have any tips on how you can maximize yield and keep them at 12ft?

Do you simply cut the tip off the bine and it stops getting taller?

Do you trim any of the bines back or let them run wild up the supports with the main bines? (if you do trim about how many do you allow to grow?)

Thanks for the info!

Simps said:

Hey BBL,

Great response. I've not heard of anyone trimming their bines at a certain height but I am definatly interested. It sounds like the perfect strategy for what I'm planning.(a glorified hop privacy fence for my deck)

Do you have any tips on how you can maximize yield and keep them at 12ft?

Do you simply cut the tip off the bine and it stops getting taller?

Do you trim any of the bines back or let them run wild up the supports with the main bines? (if you do trim about how many do you allow to grow?)

Thanks for the info!

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Well, it slows down vertical growth considerably, but not completely. And yes, I trim off the tip of the bine just above the first internode (the first set of leaves). The auxillary buds near the top of the bine become the new top shoots at this point and it will continue to gain in length. Especially if it's early in the season or your variety flowers on the late side. If they have no where to go, they will droop over and tangle up with other parts of the plant for support. I usually just let them be at this point and if a couple shoots near the top get too long and break off in the wind, so be it. You don't really have to do anything at this point to increase yield other than normal watering and fertilization. The auxillary shoots will go crazy after you prune it and that's where the flowers form. Once it takes back off and the auxillarys start growing out, I prune back the bottom couple feet just because it doesn't get as much light down there and I would rather the plant focus it's energy on the upper shoots. Other than that, I just let the auxillary shoots do as they wish. I make a grid pattern with twine on my trellis. I have two vertical strings per crown, and 5 or 6 (can't remember off hand) horzontal strings that stretch across the whole trellis. This allows some extra support for the shoots. Occasionally, I will have to train a couple lower shoots onto one of the horizontal strings or another part of the plant becasue you get some wild ones that shoot out into nowhere. If they get too long they will break off or kink from weight or heavy wind. Originally, I started doing this as an attempt to combat spider mites. Spider mites like it hot and dry. By making the plants more bushy, it's traps more moisture around the leaves and makes it easier to control the infestation. I don't know what it is about my area, but I've had problems with them since year one. Honestly, I expected this to decrease my yeild, but it didn't seem to hurt anything.