Training Hop Bines: Which Way They Twine and How to String Them

A bine, not a vine

Hops are properly called bines rather than vines, and the distinction is practical. A vine climbs with tendrils or suckers that grip whatever they touch. A bine climbs by winding its whole stem around a support, helped along by rows of tiny stiff hooked hairs on the stem and leaf stalks. Those hooks give the bine purchase on a rough string, and they are also why a bine drawn through bare hands leaves fine parallel scratches like a cat has caught you.

Wear long sleeves and gloves whenever you handle growing bines, and especially at harvest, when you will be pulling armfuls of them down. The scratches are shallow and harmless but they sting, they add up over an afternoon, and they are far worse on a hot day when you are working in a shirt with the sleeves pushed up.

Because the plant winds rather than grips, it cannot climb a smooth surface, a thick post or a wide plank. It needs something thin and rough enough to wrap around: coir or sisal twine, jute, or a thin wire. Coarse natural twine is the traditional choice because it grips well and can be cut down and composted with the spent bine at the end of the season.

Clockwise, always

Hop bines twine clockwise when viewed from above, which is to say they follow the sun. This is fixed behavior, not a preference. If you wind a shoot the other way around its string it will unwind itself within a day or two and fall off, and you will conclude that hops are difficult to train when in fact you were fighting the plant.

The practical test at the string: stand facing the plant, take the growing tip and lay it against the string so that it passes from your left to your right in front of the string, then behind and around. Give it two or three full turns rather than one, so it holds while it grows into position. Once the tip has made a couple of turns of its own accord, it will keep going on its own to the top.

Shoots grow surprisingly fast in warm weather, up to a foot (30 cm) a day at peak, so a shoot that is not attached to anything can put itself somewhere awkward overnight. Check the plants every few days during the climbing phase and wind on any tip that has missed its string or has started to spiral around a neighboring bine.

If a wound-on shoot keeps sliding off, the string is probably too smooth or too slack. Natural fiber twine strained taut between a ground anchor and the top wire holds far better than plastic cord.

Select the shoots, then cut the rest

An established crown sends up far more shoots than it can ripen cones on: fifteen or twenty is common. Left alone they make a dense mat that shades itself, holds damp air and cones poorly. The standard practice is to let the first flush grow to about a foot (30 cm), cut it off at ground level, and train the second flush, which comes up stronger, more even and later enough to miss the worst early aphid pressure.

1. Let the first flush run, then cut it When the earliest shoots reach eight to twelve inches (20 to 30 cm) in early spring, cut them all off at soil level with a knife or shears. They are edible, incidentally, and treated like thin asparagus. The crown responds by pushing a second, more uniform flush within one to two weeks.
2. Pick the best three or four shoots per string From the second flush choose the strongest, thickest shoots. Two to three bines per string, or six to eight per mature crown across two or three strings, is the working number. Fewer, better-fed bines give bigger cones than a crowd of thin ones.
3. Wind them on clockwise in the morning Train shoots when they are eighteen inches (45 cm) or so, and do it in the morning when the growth is soft and flexible. Wrap each one two or three turns around its string, clockwise from above. Handle the tip lightly; a snapped growing point means that bine is finished for the year.
4. Remove everything you did not select Cut all remaining shoots off at ground level, and keep doing it every couple of weeks as new ones appear through early summer. This is the single job most home growers skip, and it is the difference between a wall of leaves and a crop of cones.
5. Strip the bottom of the bines Once the trained bines are well up, strip the leaves and any side shoots off the lowest three to four feet (90 to 120 cm) of stem. That opens the base to airflow and light, keeps splashed soil off the foliage, and cuts down mildew and aphid movement up from ground level substantially.

The top of the string and the side arms

The cones are carried on short side shoots, called laterals or side arms, which the bine puts out from the leaf joints once it has reached its full height and daylength triggers flowering. That means the top two-thirds of the bine does the cropping, and the bottom third is plumbing. A bine that is still climbing hard when it should be branching has usually been fed too much nitrogen.

When the bine reaches the top wire it will keep going and start to trail. Let it: the trailing growth still makes laterals and cones. What you must not do is let it wander into a neighboring bine, because two tangled bines cannot be picked separately and cannot be pulled down cleanly. If two meet, unwind one carefully and redirect it while the growth is still soft.

For a run of strings, the usual arrangement is a top wire strained between two stout posts at 12 to 18 feet (3.6 to 5.5 m), with individual strings dropped from it to ground anchors at each plant. A pulley or a cleat at one end lets you lower the whole wire for picking, which is much safer than working at the top of a ladder with an armful of bine.