Broke off the top of my hop bines! Will they recover?

[bmckee56]

When attempting to train the bines to my twine, I broke off the top portion of the plant (Only a few inches or so from the tip of the plant). They are Willamette hops and were growing quite well until I snapped the tops off. Did I screw up or will they recover and continue to climb?

Salute!

 

[Clonefarmer]

When the tips get broken off the sidearms at the nearest leaf node start to grow. You should get two bines at that point maybe more from lower leaf nodes. This happened to me last year.

 

[david_42]

My experience has been that they don't recover, good to know other people have had better luck.

 

[Clonefarmer]

My experience has been that they don't recover, good to know other people have had better luck.

All the bines on all the plants were chewed off by some critter. Than the dog ran through some of them a month later breaking off the tips again. They grew new bines from the leaf nodes, but some did not flower. They were first year so I can't say if it was because they weren't established or because the tips broke.

 

[Willie3]

Hops are like weeds. They will grow back and sometimes even stronger. I cannot kill mine off. My bines are 8 feet tall already and I am thinking that I need to chop them to the ground and restart the growth to get them to flower later in the season.

I think I will just let them go and hope for two harvests. You should be fine. No worries just ensure that they get plenty of sun. When they are tall and have grown well, I trim the leaves and sidearms from about 2.5 feet from the ground so the breezes can get under the plants. It seems to work well to prevent DM or other blight related issues.

Good Luck.

WW

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

The bine loses Apical Dominance which triggers sidearm production. I forget the typical sidearm length of Williamette but when the tip is gone all you can do is train the sidearm. Downside is that the plant won;t grow any taller than the sidearms normal length.

If the main bine was short to begin with, you'd prolly be better off to snub that bine and train the next one taht emerges. I think the longest sidearm for any species is 40".

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

When they are tall and have grown well, I trim the leaves and sidearms from about 2.5 feet from the ground so the breezes can get under the plants. It seems to work well to prevent DM or other blight related issues.

Good Luck.

WW

Yes. Also provides less real estate for crawlers to climb on to get to the cooler inner bits of the plant. Like Catterpillers.

 

[Homercidal]

Good thing is, hops usually create many sprouts, and it's early in the season. Eventually you will get more bines coming up that you can train in place of the damaged ones.

 

[bmckee56]

Thanks to all for the information. It appears my most reasonable approach now would be to train the new bines. Unfortunately I had already removed several that were not being trained, so I will have to wait for new ones to sprout.


Salute!

 

[melchermatt]

I usually cut the growing tip of the bines when the reach the top of the trellis. Once snipped (or broken) they stop growing up and send out the sides shoots as others have mentioned. The side shoots produce plenty of hops from my experience.