3rd year hops advice

[hoppymonkey]

Alright so technically they are not 3rd year, but they are certainly growing like they are.( 1' tall already) Last year I dug up a huge mound of them from a well established patch and planted at the house in a raised bed so we are talking about 40+ rhizomes/crowns. I just took down the raised bed to expand it and there were 1/2" roots coming out of the bottom so needless to say they are well established. So normally people tie 2-3 of the best bines per rhizome up, but mine are too robust to tell. Any advice on how to do the beginning training/ cutting?

 

[BBL_Brewer]

I just try and pick the biggest, meatiest, fastest growing bines and run with it. With a mature crown, there will be quite a few bines and many will look just as robust as the next. The idea more than anything I think is to limit the number of bines you allow to grow. I train 6 bines per crown and 3 bines per string. If you let too many bines grow, the plant will waste resources on the extra bines and your hop crop will suffer. Also keep in mind, with mature crowns, you will have to go through about every 1-2 weeks (if not sooner) and cut out new sprouts. The crown will keep firing off new bine shoots like crazy. You have to weed these out. I have 2 cascade, 1 centennial, and 1 CTZ. This will be my third year. Last year I got about 8 lbs of hops total from all four.