Hop bine has been "topped".

[Iansberg]

If something nibbles the top of my young bine, will it still grow? That is, does it produce side shoots or anything and keep climbing? It is about 8 inches tall currently, maybe I prune it? This is year one planting.

Thanks!

 

[Kaz15]

Hmmm. This is an interesting problem. Normally I’d say don’t worry about it and let the next wave of growth take over. But since it’s a first year plant, you may want to just let it be. If there is a set of leaves below where it was chopped off, it should have two shoots take over at that point. And you can let those grow.


I think my main concern would be stopping the nibbler from doing any further damage. Chicken wire barricade my first thought. Whatever it takes to keep them away from the base of the plant.

Hope it works out!

 

[CodeSection]

If something nibbles the top of my young bine, will it still grow? That is, does it produce side shoots or anything and keep climbing? It is about 8 inches tall currently, maybe I prune it? This is year one planting.

Thanks!

You didn't mention what was nibbling on your plant. I bought four of these nine years ago to control pack rats since I live in a desert area. Havahart Small 2-Door Professional Live Animal Cage Trap for Rat, Squirrel, Chipmunk, and Weasel-1025 - The Home Depot I haven't used them for roughly two years and decided to put them to use once I received my hop plants. I placed them strategically around my grow bags and the area they are in.

Needless to say, my hop plants are doing well with no nibblers and I have caught 21 pack rats thus far. It has been a few days since my last catch as I suspect the pack rat population has dropped significantly in my area.

 

[Iansberg]

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure what's eating it, could be deer or marmots, as most likely candidates.

 

[NitrogenWidget]

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure what's eating it, could be deer or marmots, as most likely candidates.

today something at the leaves off of some of my plants.
I suspect it's another ground hog So I put the game camera up and baited a cage trap with mango.
the hops are 10ft tall now and I needed to trim the bottom few feet anyways, but I still don't like things munching my hops.

anyway, last yr something Topped one of my plants when it was just 4ft tall.
then it started throwing out sidearms.
so I trained one of the sidearms up the rope and that became the new top.
thing grew to the wire 18ft up then another 3-4ft.