This places them at a disadvantage to international counterparts, making it more difficult for them to compete on the world hop market. Dwarf hop varieties have been developed to address the problems of English growers and fulfil specific brewery requirements. M any of the challenges facing English hop growers are brought about by the height of the traditional hop bine. Every spring coir yarn or string has to be connected to the wire structure to support hop bines as they grow, this is a process known as stringing. When spring growth begins, each bine has to be trained so that it grows up the support strings.
Training is a time consuming process, with five or even six training passes having to be made.
A large number of semiskilled workers are necessary during training. A lot of land in traditional hop gardens remains unproductive because of the area taken up by supporting structure. The room required by the huge support dictates where a hop garden can be planted. Costs associated with traditional hop garden construction are very high. Maintenance of these yards is very expensive and it requires skill to realign and tension the wire every season.