I started wrapping my hops around baleing twine. I noticed some wearing on the hop where it was wrapping around the twine a bit to late and the top end of my bine snapped off. I'm assuming baling twine isn't an appropriate line to grow around (?) or could this have been caused by something else?
Were your hops bines already quite large when you wrapped them to the
twine? I've read that hops use little hairs to grab on to surfaces to get a
foothold and have found young bines to be quite grabby. What I'm getting
at is that if the bines were quite mature when wrapped, they haven't had a
change to get a grip on the twine so could do with extra support. I had
long blades of grass around the place and found that I can use them to tie
bines to supports.
Just thinking about what you said about the top end snapping off, could it
be the top (young) end established a good grip but because the sections
below aren't well secured are pulling down on the top end and causing the
break?
What's baling twine anyway? Is it made of some kind of plastic like nylon
or something and is really smooth? Twine with rough surfaces would
probably be best to use.
Perhaps you could make regularly spaced knots (e.g every 6 inches or so)
on the twine before wrapping the hops to it - maybe next time if too late
- to create extra places for the hop to get extra grip if the twine is quite
smooth.
T.