Selecting Hop Shoots

When you're growing hops for beer production you want to trim off most of the shoots to select the strongest. It lets the rhizome concentrate on sending those ones up. That won't prevent it from trying to grow others, you'll have to keep trimming new shoots until July, but the first trimming of the year is always the most dramatic.

Here's the before and after picture. I think they indicate that I need to divide my rhizome in the fall. Every few years you should dig down and trim out a portion of your rhizome. That's essentially how they are propagated for sale. Perhaps I will get the motivation to do this come October.